
Class 

Book 

Copyright N^.. 



-t-fctj 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



MOTHERHOOD 



MOTHERHOOD 

AND THE 
RELATIONSHIPS OF THE SEXES 

BY 

- ^ C. GASQUOINE HARTLEY , ,. ^ . „^ 

" Author of "The Truth About Women" "The Age of Mother- Power," etc. 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1917 



HO 1^1 

us 



Copyright, 1917, bY 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. 



MAY 29 1917 

v©C!,A467203 



Betrtcatton 

TO LESLIE 

In whiting at last this book on Motherhood, which for so 
many years has had a place in my thoughts, one truth has 
forced itself upon me; the predominant position of Woman 
in her natural relation to the race. The mother is the main 
stream of the racial life. All the hope of the future rests 
upon this faith in motherhood. 

To whom, then, but to you, my son, can I dedicate my book? 
You came to me when I was still seeking out a way in the 
futility of Individual ends; you reconciled my warring motives 
and desires; you brought me a new guiding principle. You 
taught me that the Individual Life is but as a bubble or 
cluster of foam on the great tide of humanity. I knew that 
the redemption of Woman rests in the growing knowledge and 
consciousness of her responsibility to the race. 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

INTRODUCTORY 

CHAP. PAGE 

I A Retrospect: The Positioi^ of Women before the 

Great European War 9 

II The Position of Women as Affected by the War 29 



PART II 

THE MATERNAL INSTINCT IN THE MAKING 

III Insect Parenthood ....... 55 

IV Parenthood among Reptiles and Fishes: A Chapter 

ON Good Fathers ....... 77 

V Parenthood among Birds, with further Examples of 

Good Fathers ....... 97 

VI Parenthood among the Higher Animals: The Fixing 

OF the Parental Instinct in the Mother . .117 

PART III 

THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 
VII The Mother in the Primitive Family , . . 137 

PART IV 

MOTHERHOOD AND THE RELATIONSHIPS 
OF THE SEXES 

VIII The Family and the Home 161 

IX Monogamous Marriage and Woman . . . .187 

X Marriage: a Continuation of the Previous Chapter, 

with some Remarks on the Character of Woman 207 
7 



8 CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

XI Sexual Relationships outside of Marriage . . 227 
XII The Ukmarried Mother 255 

XIII The Danger of Secret Diseases 283 

PART V 

SEXUAL EDUCATION 

XIV The Mother and the Child 301 

XV Sexual Education, with Special Reference to 

the Adolescent Girl ...... 327 

XVI A Continuation of the Last Chapter, with an At- 
tempt TO SUGGEST A REMEDY ..... 349 

Bibliography ........ 379 

Index 395 



PART I 

INTRODUCTORY 

It is now a well-established truism to say that the 
most injurious influences affecting the physical con- 
dition of young children arise from the habits, cus- 
toms and practices of the people themselves rather 
than from external surroundings or conditions. The 
environment of the infant is its mother. Its health 
and physical fitness are dependent primarily upon her 
health, her capacity in domesticity, and her knowl- 
edge of infant care and management. Thus the fun- 
damental requirement in regard to this particular 
problem is healthy motherhood and the art and prac- 
tice of mothercraft. Given a healthy and careful 
mother we are on the high road to securing a healthy 
infant ; from healthy infancy we may expect healthy 
childhood, and from healthy childhood may be laid 
the foundations of a nation's health. 

"Education and Infant Welfare." 

Annual Report for 1914 of the Chief Medical Of- 
ficer of the Board of Education* 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I 

A RETROSPECT THE POSITION OF WOMEN BEFORE THE 

GREAT EUROPEAN WAR 

The overwhelming events of the Great War — Change in my own 
views — Primitive conception of the relative position of the two 
sexes — The war divides the feminist struggle into two periods — 
The demand of woman to live her own life — The merits and 
demerits of the Suffrage Movement — The vote gospel a drug 
swallowed to still the craving for something vitally needed — 
"Women swept out of their own interests into a swirling sea of 
desire — Emotion the strong guide to action — Militancy — A tre- 
mendous adventure — The mob spirit — Sowing a crop of feminine 
wild oats — What has been gained — Much experience and some 
knowledge — Experience indispensable as a foundation of a 
broader feminism — Solidarity of women — War came like a thun- 
derbolt from a clear sky — The clamour and deception of meet- 
ings and propaganda. 



MOTHERHOOD 

CHAPTER I 

A RETROSPECT 

THE POSITION OF WOMEN BEFORE THE GREAT EURQPEAN 

WAR 

"There is one profound weakness in your movement towards eman- 
cipation. Your whole argument is based on an acceptance of male 
values." — Dr. Ananda Coomaraswary. 

As I set out to write yet another book on Woman, I find 
it necessary first to decide whether the primary interest 
should rest in the eternal instincts, passions and typical 
character of womanhood, or in women's actions and char- 
acters as affected by the unusual conditions of the time in 
which my work is undertaken. It is a decision by no means 
so simple as it would seem. 

Always the realisation of what is immediately before 
us tends by its vivid nearness to give an over-estimation 
of its significance. But to read life in this way is to 
understand very little. Something must be done to clear 
our vision so that we may take a wider view. The pres- 
ent, after all, is but the day at which the past and the 
future meet. 

Yet there are times when some overwhelming event so 
sharply changes the present as to obscure all the shining 
wonder of life. And at no period in history has this been 
more true than it has been in Europe in the last two years. 

13 



14. MOTHERHOOD 

Nowhere and never in the world can there have been a 
period of deeper or more rapid change. War came upon 
us without warning, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky ; 
and in a day the outlook of life was changed. 

Now, this thought of surprising and quick-coming 
change brings me to something it is necessary for me to 
sa3^ My book should have been begun many months back, 
at the very beginning of the war. But here I have to make 
a confession. The war caused in my mind a confusion 
that for some time left me extremely uncertain upon many 
things about which hitherto I have been sure. It has been 
a war of miracles in so far as it has made real much that 
seemed outside the world of possibility. Our sluggard 
imaginations have been stirred by an appeal that has 
aroused many primitive emotions. 

I recall the opening sentence in the last book that I wrote 
on Woman.-"^ "The twentieth century is the age of Woman. 
Some day, it may be, it will be looked back upon as the 
golden age — the dawn, some say, of feminine civilisation." 

Now, as I read this statement, which, when I wrote it, I 
felt to be true, it appears so wrong as to be almost ridicu- 
lous. That sort of dream is over. 

What a fantastic picture it was that Suffrage militancy 
made for itself before the outbreak of the war. We pic- 
tured a golden age which was to come with the self-asser- 
tion of women ; an age in which most of those problems 
that have vexed mankind from the dawn of history were to 
be solved automatically by a series of quick penny-in-the~ 
slot reforms, that would follow on the splendour and su- 
periority of woman's rule. Militants, aflame for the refor- 
mation of man, discussed prostitution, the White Slave 
1 The Position of Women in Primitive Society. 



A RETROSPECT 15 

traffic, and all sex problems with a zeal that was partly 
pathological and partly the result of a Utopian dream. 

Then, at the most crucial hour in the history of women's 
struggle for power and political recognition, all this dream 
was arrested. In the stress of war, the promise of an ac- 
cumulating betterment was swept down, even as a too- 
bright dawn that passes into storm; the ugly aspects of 
life sprang upon us with intensifying urgency. Yes, the 
sudden events of war seemed, for women, to have blotted 
out the present and the past, and to have made all action 
uncertain. 

So it is always when life is stirred at its depths. The 
change was almost staggering. Women have had to learn 
many new and strange lessons ; they are more changed 
than perhaps they themselves know. 

There had come a time when, without any prepara- 
tion, we women were brought back to the primitive con- 
ception of the relative position of the two sexes. Military 
organisation and battle afford the grand opportunity for 
the superior force capacity of the male. Again man was 
the fighter, the protector of woman and the home. And 
at once his pK)wer became a reality. The striking and 
praise-demanding work was done by men. And at the first 
violent change there seemed to be nothing for women 
beyond the patience of waiting and the service of sacrifice. 
Later, women have been called to step in to take the places 
of men, and there has been work for them to do of all 
kinds and in ever-increasing amount. But of this work, 
and the new conditions that have thereby arisen, I pro- 
pose to speak in the next chapter. Here I am consider- 
ing only the events that rushed upon women at the oncom- 
ing of war. And inevitably they were pushed aside into 



16 MOTHERHOOD 

obscurity ; they had to be content with unnoticed work that 
not infrequently was futile. 

It is hard to step so suddenly out of the limelight. And 
women were acutely aware of this change in their pros- 
pects, and many of them expressed the situation with en- 
gaging frankness. Let me give a small illustration. I 
had occasion in the late summer of 1914, a few weeks after 
the war had started, to visit a friend. Some months had 
passed since I had previously seen her. At that time she 
was actively engaged in the suffrage campaign. Now, I 
found her knitting woollen comforters for the soldiers, and 
she was knitting them very badly, I expressed my sur- 
prise. Her answer to me was, "It is all that there is to do." 
She then added this significant statement, "We women 
have had to learn our place." 

There was, of course, exaggeration in her remark. But 
it does, I believe, picture what happened in the thoughts of 
many women with the sudden ceasing of their active 
struggle for political recognition. It was a state of re- 
signed surprise. 

And may it not be that women had need of some 
lesson.'^ 

In the curious phases witnessed before the war, in that 
struggle which was but a more violent expression of the 
eternal effort at adjustment between the sexes, there were 
many strange signs to give pause and fear to all who think. 
Women did not, as I believe, realise the possible results of 
their sex rebellion. They did not sufficiently distinguish 
between those limitations and hardships which could com- 
paratively easily be removed and those limitations and hard- 
ships which are due to the nature of their sex. Old tra- 
ditions, without any discrimination, were cast aside in a 



A RETROSPECT 17 

violent seeking, and women broke out in unexpected ways, 
to fight nervously, carelessly, yet hungrily, as if they were 
trying to force the pace of progress. 

Women are possessed of great elasticity and cleverness; 
they are, and possibly will always remain, more imitative 
than creative. And from this follows a very real danger, 
plainly arising from the quick feminine receptiveness which 
is at once the strength of women as well as the cause of 
their pitiable weakness. In every direction the new inde- 
pendence and work capacity of woman was proved in fol- 
lowing and imitating men. Thus it was easy for women to 
externalise their life in every way, and to gain success in 
many different kinds of work. But the question has never 
been — could women do this, or do that, kind of work.^^ 
rather it is — what work is it most worth while for them 
to do.? 

Wounded by the narrowness of their lives, women spent 
immense energy out of which much that is good has been 
gained. Much that was false has crumbled into ruins, but 
also much that was fine. What was wanting most was this : 
the complete absence in the entire programme of reform 
of any kind of feminine idealism. 

Did women forget? I think that they did. The realm 
of woman was still splendid, still vast. Why, then, this 
rage against all restrictions.? Why this continuous effort 
to obliterate the wise differences of sex? 

In their violent seeking for life, women were ready to 
spend all to gain something which may well prove to be 
absolutely unnecessary to them. And to many it must 
have seemed that they wasted the whole of themselves only 
to lose something within themselves. There was much heroic 
fighting. Women robbed life for the sake of what they be- 



18 MOTHERHOOD 

lieved was freedom; yet may it not prove that they have 
been in love with that which is unattainable for women? 

The demand of woman to "live her own life" brought, 
as it seems to some of us, a slavery not less strong or less 
evil than that from which an escape was sought. Women, 
however unconsciously, were suppressing themselves in new 
ways, and still doing things alien to themselves. This rest- 
less seeking was but a further foolish forgetting of the 
truth that the only freedom worth having is the freedom 
to be one's self. All that women had promised themselves 
in a new order of existence must depend on their acceptance 
of the responsibilities and limitations of their womanhood. 
And by this I mean a full and glad acceptance of those 
physical facts of their organic constitution which make 
them unlike men, and should limit their capacity for many 
kinds of work. It can never be anything but foolishness to 
attempt to break down the real differences between the two 
sexes. 

This may be a hard saying to some women: I believe 
that it is true. 

It is necessary to emphasise this fact again, and yet 
again, because it is the almost complete disregard by women 
of their own sexual nature and its special needs that is 
the grave evil that is robbing us of life ; this was also the 
inherent weakness in the Women's Movement, which, so 
far from fulfilling the promise of its earlier period, had 
ceased, even before war brought us back to realities, to 
exert any widely representative or serious influence. 

The predilection for wild pranks, which in this country 
marked the later efforts of women to gain political recog- 
nition, may, I think, be traced back to causes bent on crush- 
ing and levelling the sex characteristics. Women had not 



A RETROSPECT 19 

sufficiently valued themselves, and thus they ceased to care 
to be essentially feminine. Instead there was an insatiable 
desire to enjoy experience, arising from lack of disciplined 
culture and from excess of energy and idleness. It is 
manifest that militancy gave to women excitement and oc- 
cupation. 

And this avidity to know and feel and shine, to estab- 
lish new contacts with life and affairs, was coupled also 
with that deeper seeking of the spirit which has robbed 
peace from the modern woman. Possibly such defects are 
essential to such a movement, a mere destructive phase in 
the process of renewing — a clearing of the ground. But 
the way to gain freedom is long and toilsome ; it is a way 
that permits of no such energetic short cuts as the militant 
Suffragists would have achieved. Mixed up with all that 
was fine in their movement was an infinity of glitter and 
tinsel, vanity and restlessness. There was present always 
an intense and theatrical egotism, a yearning to make an 
impression and force applause at any cost. 

There was, of course, another side — a side which most 
gladly I acknowledge. No movement that was founded 
merely on excitement would have overcome difficulties as 
the Suffrage movement did, nor could its members have 
worked and suffered as they did for a common end. There 
was always much even in the most mistaken militancy that 
was generous, ardent and wholesome. But these useful 
qualities were deformed by a want of proportion and san- 
ity ; by feelings run riot that made women impatient of all 
restraints, overweeningly sure of themselves, and incapable 
of facing troublesome facts or foreseeing the most certain 
consequences of their own actions. There is nothing here 
that should surprise us. 



20 MOTHERHOOD 

In many cases, perhaps in all, emotion is the sole and 
strong guide of our actions. At least, I am sure this is 
true of women. What we do is to invent reasons to jus- 
tify acts to which we are impelled by some emotion arising 
from an instinctive need. I do not see how this can be 
avoided, nor do I at all regard it in itself as evil. Reason 
by itself too often is an excuse for doing nothing ; it is the 
excuse of all those who take infinite care not to see in case 
they may come to feel. Reason alone never does anything ; 
it is too reasonable. The necessary thing is first to feel. 
And the only possible method of guiding emotion is to 
realise its force and to use it successfully; not to take 
cover fearfully in avoidance of feeling. 

There is, indeed, a ver}^ deep reason for this human need 
for emotion. The springs of our actions may be traced 
back in almost all cases to certain excitements arising from 
some need or desire of whose existence in ourselves we are 
in nine cases out of ten quite unconscious, but which (un- 
less dammed up when the fear of an escape is always great 
and imminent) will find an expression in characteristic 
instinctive acts. And the most forcible human excitements 
are fear and anger: these exercise an energising influence 
on body and mind often leading to the accomplishment of 
quite extraordinary acts. Periods of intense excitement 
will yield a consciousness of overwhelming strength, so that 
the individual reaches a state of self-forgetfulness in which 
almost anything may be done. Almost every one must at 
some time have experienced this super-strength. And what 
is important to note is that at an opportunity for exercis- 
ing these emotions, the most peaceable people have felt the 
stir of the primitive instincts of hate and fear, of anger 
and the desire to destroy and to hurt. They have developed 



A, RETROSPECT 31 

— often to their own surprise — ^the destructive capacities 
of the fight-loving, danger-braving animal. And when 
such emotions seize on individuals in groups, their effect 
is greatly intensified and is felt by many who would be only 
slightly susceptible to such emotions when isolated. 

This explains, I believe, the surprising revolt of women 
and how it was they broke out in such unexpected ways. 
There is in the sex an immense and unrecognised capacity 
for adventure, due to the surplus of energy unused that 
was so painfully present in the lives of many women, and to 
the expression of which the narrowness of their lives had 
afforded little opportunity. The danger here was strong 
for women, because in their lives, to a far greater extent 
than in the lives of men, there had been so many dammed- 
up channels of emotion. It is the things they might not 
do that had mattered for women, and not the things they 
had been allowed to do. Then the fever of this anger 
caught hold of them, and they became conscious of an 
obscure travail in their souls. Here, indeed, were causes 
of unrest ; here were the first shadows of some subtle decay. 

The suffrage movement was a search — ^yes, a wild search 
— for something to bridge the gap, for something to do 
that mattered, something to open the gates to adventure. 
The militant revolt to many women proved an exciting 
game. This may appear strange ; but what I want you to 
mark is that such violence was a necessary thing for women. 
They felt impelled to get into their lives something that 
meant movement, excitement, joy, and the stinging of ad- 
venture. 

And they have been happy. 

To many people, and especially to men, it seemed that in 
adopting militancy women were departing entirely from 



Sa MOTHERHOOD 

their womanhood. But it is just here they were mistaken ; 
they did not grasp the fact that women had felt injured, 
and that this injury aroused in them an excitement of anger 
forcing wild action. Women, too, I think, have not them- 
selves understood the real causes of their actions. It was 
impossible to follow the procession of excuses by which 
the militant apologists attempted to justify their often 
senseless outrages on the law without realising how er- 
roneously they comprehended their own movement. They 
honestly thought that they were espousing the cause of 
Woman's freedom ; it never struck them that they were not 
working for this, at least that this was not the motive which 
impelled their actions of violence. They did not know that 
they were taking the quickest way to fill lives left empty, 
and to express in action the clamorous excitement that 
surged within them. It is never easy for women to be quite 
honest even to themselves. 

Manifestly this violent seeking was but an outgrowth 
of woman's fierce race-protecting passion; an unconscious 
expression of that instinct to give life which rules not only 
in the body but in the spirit of woman. Many women 
fought without truly wanting to fight, and merely because 
their deep hidden instincts demanded something on which 
to expend themselves. 

There was in the Suffrage movement a wise policy of 
action. And this using of women's stored-up energy, how- 
ever wastefully it may have been expended, inflamed in 
them a gladness that made easy all their payments of im- 
prisonment, of forcible feeding, and even of death. In 
militancy women gained an object and a satisfaction: they 
were the centre of something that depended on them. Their 
movement, with all its absurdities, was a live thing in their 



A RETROSPECT 23 

hands. Thus the members gave to the cause their labour 
and their enthusiasm, and, because they had given it so 
much, they came to love it. Their energetic organisation 
came to stand above them like a big, greedy child, grab- 
bing at anything and everything. It robbed from them 
the flying hours of life, little by little devouring them. 
But in so doing new fuel was thrown on the dead flames of 
women's passions. For they gained that for which they 
were seeking. A new, strange opportunity for saicrifice 
was here, supplying the need which, however unrecognised 
and denied, is the fundamental desire of woman. This was 
the joy that was gained by the Suffrage martyrs — some- 
thing vivifying, flooding dead lives with colour, action and 
emotion. Yes, these women yielded themselves to their 
movement with joy, just as a woman yields herself to her 
lover that she may give life to his child. 

And then all this audacious, hardly understood move- 
ment was brought to an end by war. Militarism put a swift 
close to militancy. As far as women were concerned, their 
hope of forcing political recognition fell to confusion. 
The war came like a great shadow across the whole bright 
complex problem of the future. So much was this so that 
writing of militancy now feels almost like referring to a 
forgotten event that happened in the very far past. It 
would be easy to pass over the whole Suffrage movement in 
silence. And, indeed, I should have done this if I did not 
believe that its inner effect on women had been more lasting 
than the outward gain. 

I wish to emphasise the change that came to women in 
the period immediately before the war. The Suffrage move- 
ment was a collective movement in which the individual 
had to win honour in self-forgetfulness and in group work. 



M MOTHERHOOD 

And this co-operation for the gaining of the Vote carried 
with it also a co-operation of service and a great develop- 
ment of mutual helpfulness. And from this it has followed 
very directly that many women have turned their backs 
for ever on petty interests and disloyalties to one another, 
and have recovered a quite fresh sense of honourable emu- 
lations and loyalty. 

This concord and unity in duty had much the same qual- 
ity of joy that sends the soldier to face death. It stirred 
something very deep in women's nature. Militancy brought 
a rare chance of happiness : it made women aware of their 
souls. Through it they first found escape from the dead- 
ness of sterile lives and gave up separate little aims that 
made conflicts between woman and woman. The petty 
strifes of no issue and no importance were changed into 
one struggle that must be won; and by expanding from 
an existence of aimlessness and stagnation into one of com- 
mon purpose and advance, women gained the chance they 
were seeking of adventure and sacrifice for body and spirit. 
No wonder, then, that they gave themselves up to a great 
holiday of the emotions. This may have expressed itself 
basely in the wrecking of property and much that was use- 
less, but it was not all base. In the lives of numberless 
women it has meant something much more than hatred and 
vanity, or self -deceiving work. 

Mihtancy has been a great as well as a very little thing. 
As a movement it was foolish and morally perverse, no 
doubt, but its members were morally passionate. The dis- 
order of purpose, the spectacle of wasted effort and folly, 
which filled many of us with anger — all this did bring glad- 
ness and liberation of spirit to the women themselves. They 
felt that their fighting was noble and glorious, which it was 



A RETROSPECT 25 

not, but they felt this with a power that came from the 
perverse conviction of their whole nature. And we shall 
need a conviction as passionate as this, but not perverse, 
before women can in the same way be won again to an equal 
passion of sacrifice and service. 

And this very rapture of escape from an aimless exist- 
ence was in itself the sign of the failure in women's lives, 
a proof that there was, indeed, something to be escaped 
from. We may not claim more than this for the Suffrage 
movement. 

War, such war as is now loose upon the world, came to 
accomplish its miracles, acting swiftly and almost without 
women knowing what was being done. The reality of life 
and of death has shaken up everything, and the quick pres- 
sure of events is changing all the conditions of life. 

Let us try to see a little more clearly. 

It has been a common mistake that amongst civilised 
peoples intellectual views and peace interests have super- 
seded the primitive fighting instincts. But the cultural 
period in which wars have been exceptional and peace the 
normal state has been short, and is, indeed, only a span 
when compared with the long history when men had to fight 
in order to live. This violence was a necessary phase in 
human, as in all animal, development. War is only an or- 
ganised and specialised replacement of this indiscriminate 
and blind struggle for life. It is probable that the instinct 
of battle was once for all developed and fixed; and the 
question arises, as to whether we shall ever get far away 
from this deeply rooted stimulus to action. It may even 
be a condition of life that we should not get too far away 
from it. 

We have had a striking example of the enthusiasm and 



26 MOTHERHOOD 

interest evoked by situations of conflict and danger, in the 
intense and primitive emotions revived in all of us by the 
war. War is the thunder and voice of the trumpet without 
which the wisest moral and political ideas never attract 
sufficient attention to lead to difficult action. For the world 
will not listen to a truth until bloodshed and violence have 
awakened its sluggard imagination. 

And in these new circumstances we all, women as well as 
men, have been caught by a powerful excitement. The 
war has us in its grip, there is no other thought, no other 
remedy, no other interest. In many ways war is the most 
uniting of all forces. We are all joined in one work of 
service and co-operation. No man or woman can turn 
away, skulk in the individual garden of their own petty in- 
terests, because they do not want to be bothered. Some- 
thing fresh has come, something that had to come, and all 
that went before is changed. 

We see thus that war has brought to all of us a succes- 
sion of disturbing revelations of reality. And the lesson 
has come most severely on those whose lives have been most 
unreal. Here is a force against which there is no argu- 
ment. We are involved in a struggle of the most mo- 
mentous dimensions. No one as yet can mark the limits 
of destruction, and in the harshness of the war's lesson the 
struggle of women for sex mastery at once became uninter- 
esting. 

For hundreds of centuries and myriads of generations 
the life of fighting has gone on for men. But women's 
opportunity waits upon leisure and peace. The savagery 
of war brings the two sexes back to primitive values. And 
the truth is forced upon us ; we realise the gulf which lies 
between the man and the woman. 



^ RETROSPECT 27 

All our days we women have been denying this separa- 
tion, and, enslaved by male ideals, have sought to break 
through the barriers of sex. We have been pursuing power, 
wrapping ourselves up in one garment after another, call- 
ing these coverings romance, adventure, work, individual 
development, and what not ; now we have come in our hearts 
to know the falsity of it all. Somewhere in the confusion 
of war stark facts awaited us. We had to face life as a 
reality, not as theories, or movements, or sex development. 

For many of us women the lesson has been sharp and 
sudden. War leapt upon us as it were a beast out of some 
hidden darkness ; leapt upon us, holding us powerless, tear- 
ing our illusions into shreds with its blood-stained claws. 

And on a sudden women were held by a new, quick- 
striking, absolute realisation of the truth. They had not 
seen it nor felt like this before. But this beast of war 
crouching in front of them said to women, "Always 1 have 
been beside you waiting for this hour. I have waited for 
a long time. You have struggled ; you have fought ; you 
have played ; you have come to think yourselves important 
in strange ways, meddling in all the affairs of the world. 
This you have done, and you have learnt much of the 
means of life, but you have everything yet to re-learn about 
life itself. 

"In all your struggles for political recognition and in 
all your work reality has not touched you. You have 
feared to be yourselves. You have been ashamed of your 
sexual differentiation. You have gathered power around 
you to pretend that you were the same as men, your 
strength as their strfength, that your work was the same 
as their work. You have mocked at those qualities that 
were your own, that set you apart from men, denying your 



g8 MOTHERHOOD 

womanhood. You have suffered. But you will not suffer 
less by any such efforts to escape. Who can wonder that 
you have been dissatisfied.'^ For you have wasted in haste 
the power that is your own. And conscious of, though not 
understanding, the want in your own lives, you have been 
deeply conscious of the discords in the rest of the world. 
The instinct of motherhood has been strong within you, 
and wasted, it has not ceased to torment you. 

"You have gained excitement and applause, much work 
you have done and had many triumphs. It has seemed a 
big thing. Yet, after all, has the gain been worth the 
payment .f^ Have women indeed escaped from their prison? 
Think, do you not know deep in your hearts that its bars 
have not been broken?" 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II 



THE POSITION OF WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 

The new conditions brought by the war — Seriousness of the position 
— My object in writing a book on motherhood — The Annual Re- 
port of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education for 
1914 — The condemnation of motherhood shown by the facts of 
this Report — The greatness of the evil that we are permitting — 
Women ill-trained as women and incapacitated for their supreme 
duty — The inquiry into the conditions of working-class mother- 
hood made by the Women's Co-operative Guild — The miserable 
health of the mothers of our working classes — This one of the 
greatest dangers and social crimes of the day — The health of 
women must be safeguarded — The problem greatly increased by 
the special war conditions — Report issued by the Health of 
Munition Workers Committee on "Employment of Women" and 
"Hours of Work" — The danger of over-working women — Woman 
sows in her flesh for the race — She needs to store energy, not to 
expend it — The confusion and failure in efficient motherhood — 
We have got to find what this failure is. 



CHAPTER II 

THE POSITION OF WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 

"To be mothers were women created and to be fathers men." — 
Sayings of Manu. 

I HAVE spoken in the last chapter of the changes that 
came in the thoughts and attention of women in the first 
few months of the war. We saw how war spoke with a 
more powerful voice, and the women who had been snatch- 
ing at power felt the quickening of a quite new spirit of 
humbleness. That uplifting was the great opportunity. 
Women discovered something stronger and more important 
than themselves. 

Our inquiry now is this : What has happened since then.? 
what fresh conditions is war developing or likely to de- 
velop .? And first it is well to note the strange power of 
war to stir us into action. Two years ago it would have 
seemed impossible to feed the hungry and clothe the ragged 
and to turn all the wasters and slackers into vigorous 
heroes. Now these things have been done ; and much that 
in peace time seemed a far-off possibility has become a 
present fact. 

War has a ten'ibly effective way of dealing not only with 
men but with their problems. And one result is that a quite 
new interest is being taken in motherhood and child wel- 
fare. 

England can no longer afford to be wasteful of the lives 
of her citizens. She has been wasteful in the past, and her 

31 



S2 MOTHERHOOD 

new mood of caring must be made a conviction and a pur- 
pose. 

As a result of this world war there has been and will 
continue to be an. immense sacrifice of men, much in ex- 
cess of any wars in the past history of nations, and it is 
evident that every belligerent country must lose from her 
best male stock ; and it is not only the physically fittest, but 
the mentally and morally fittest, that are sacrificed. 

For years to come the birth rates will be lowered through- 
out the greater part of Europe. In our own land the situa- 
tion is one that must give fear. Our death rate has been 
very high in numbers and in quality, while at the same time 
our birth rate has been the lowest on record. Even the 
civilian death rate has risen ; and, worst and most menacing 
of all, the infantile mortality rate has risen two per thou- 
sand above the average of the last two years. 

Put these grave facts together, and, with even a frac- 
tion of realisation of their meaning, it becomes clear that 
we have to face a wastage of life unparalleled in the annals 
of our race. What are we going to do ? 

Now, I am not one who believes in the advantage, or 
even in the possibility of any forced excess in procrea- 
tive activity. Numbers are of less importance to a 
nation than the moral, mental, and physical superiority 
of its men. The wholesale waste of these qualities in 
war is just what must be of such enormous menace 
to the future. The nation that does nothing to meet 
this and to ensure as far as possible the superiority of 
the next generation of her children will gain nothing 
even from victory, for it will mean only defeat in the 
future. 

The issues of life and death have by the lurid war- 



WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 33 

light been forced upon our attention. And again I ask, 
What are we going to do? 

The answer is plain. This terrible loss of life and of 
the forces of life abroad in war must be made good 
by a more intelligent and efficient care of the young 
lives at home. This we must do, and we must do it quickly. 
It is possible for a nation by such increased care of the 
rising generation of its children to compensate itself for 
the loss of lives during the war within a comparatively 
short period after the close of war. Indeed, if we have 
the will, as we possess the means, we can make it true that 
because of the war there will be more people — ^yes, and 
healthier and happier — in this land of ours in ten or fifteen 
years' time than if the war had never happened. 

This is what we can do. Shall we do it? The answer 
is with women. We can, within limits, do almost what we 
please. There has come to us a great opportunity, and 
out of the gates of death itself we may snatch life. 

Much waits to be done, not only in the actual saving 
of infantile life, but further, by providing effective and 
prompt remedies to all bad conditions of living, so that the 
health and the mental capacity and moral character of 
the children dependent upon these conditions, or related 
to them, may be raised and maintained at a right standard 
of efficiency. Then we have to realise that more even than 
this is needed, and that all our efforts will fail of their 
full effect unless we go further back than the child, and the 
problem of the mother be frankly faced. The question of 
infantile mortality and child welfare is really the question 
of motherhood. And there is now no ultimate need of 
the State greater, more imperative, than this of securing 
a more enlightened motherhood. 



34 MOTHERHOOD 

This need is the reason for my book. I know that the 
days of war are not a time suitable either for the writing 
or reading of long books. Yet I offer no apology, so 
convinced I am of the urgency of this matter of saving 
motherhood that I had to write. 

The object of my book is two-fold. First, to jput 
forward a fresh plea for assigning that high value to 
motherhood in practice which at present it receives only 
in words. This would ensure at once right conditions 
for all mothers and all children ; it would also serve better 
than anything else to do away with many age-old mistakes, 
misunderstandings and disorder. In the second place (or 
rather in connection with all that is said), I wish to set 
forth what seem to me to be the chief causes that hitherto 
have hindered motherhood and bound my sex from the 
full enjoyment of life; and to suggest that the reason of 
this bondage is not, as is so often stated, the aggressive 
selfishness of men, but is due much more to women's own 
actions, to their absurdly wrong education and entire mis- 
understanding of the sexual life ; a misunderstanding which 
has decided the direction in which they believed the freedom 
they have been so ardently, yet wastefully seeking, was 
to be found. 

So that we may understand our present failures better, 
I have attempted to seek causes and to suggest reasons. 
My inquiry reaches back before human parenthood and 
examines the parental instinct in its making; it shows the 
way and for what reason this instinct of caring for the 
young became fixed and stronger in the mother than in the 
father. It sets out from this beginning, and, after a short 
chapter on primitive motherhood, passes to the considera- 
tion of women and the home, marriage as it affects parent- 



WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 35 

hood, the unmarried mother and sexual relationships out- 
side of marriage, as well as other allied questions. It tries 
to offer a practical solution to some of the problems 
involved, in particular the problem of education and new 
ideals of conduct and sexual health for all girls. It 
recommends a revolution in our schools and methods of 
training; changes that must, as I believe, be made, unless 
we are prepared to accept as inevitable the decay of mother- 
hood, as well as an increasing failure of happiness in mar- 
riage, with its resulting antagonism between sex and sex. 

But to return to this present introductory chapter. I 
have upon my study table two documents. The one is 
that from which I have taken the quotation placed before 
this opening section of my book. It is the Annual Report 
for 1914,^ of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of 
Education. The second consists of two pamphlets on the 
Health of Munition Workers, treating of the Hours of 
Work and Employment of Women, both prepared by the 
command of Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, and published 
in connection with the important illustrated Report, which 
shows and explains all the numerous and different engineer- 
ing operations on which women are now engaged in muni- 
tion work. The object of the Report is to attract more 
women workers ; but it is with the two pamphlets I am 
concerned. For the present, however, I shall leave them, 
returning to them later in order to show how closely they 
are connected with the other Report, which treats of infant 
mortality, child disease and neglect, and all the wastage 
of motherhood. It is on the shameful significance of the 
facts given in this Report that we must now fix our 
attention. 

1 See note at the end of the chapter. 



36 MOTHERHOOD 

It would be difficult to find a more complete condemna- 
tion of motherhood. The Report is full of condemning 
facts. For, let us not disguise it from ourselves that, in 
spite of much that has been done, many efforts and real 
improvements, motherhood remains very evil; about the 
lives of little children lurk cruelties, disease, dirt, and 
neglect that ought not to be permitted. 

Let me take one group of facts from this Report ; facts 
that cry out to us all how urgently wrong things are. In 
the year 1914, 92,166 children died in England and Wales 
under one year of age. Think of the wanton wastage: 
in every thousand children bom one hundred and five have 
died. Their number of the year's toll of new lives reaches 
close up to the recorded deaths for the first fifteen months 
of war ! -^ And the evil does not end here, for the bad con- 
ditions which kill these babies act also in maiming and dis- 
abling, or at least in lowering the health standard, of many 
of the children who live, and thus add to the number of 
those who die in the early years of childhood, or survive 
only with enfeebled bodies and defective minds. And, 
further, no account is taken here of the lives that are lost 
before birth takes place : I mean the still births and abor- 
tions, the ante-natal deaths of which no record is kept. 
Our tendency is to assume that life begins at the birth, 
whereas the life of each child starts at the moment of its 
conception. Thus the birth rate is really the survival from 
the conception rate. And the destruction of life before 
birth from adverse ante-natal conditions is probably larger 
than the death rate in the first post-natal year. 

You will see that the problem is sufficiently grave, And 

iThe number recorded as killed up to November 9, 1914, was 
109,723. 



WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 37 

this unnecessary waste— for it is unnecessary — is going on 
every year, and will go on until we begin to feel it strongly 
enough to take action to prevent it. It can be prevented. 
The chief causes of infant mortality are briefly two — 

(1) Poor physique of the mother or inheritable disease 

in one or other parent, causing premature births 
with weakened constitutions and congenital de- 
fects in the children. 

(2) Ignorance of mothers in appropriate infant dare 

and low standard of home life ; bad feeding and 
insanitary conditions are accountable for the 
greater number of child deaths. 
We find the infantile death rate is much higher in urban 

communities than it is in rural England. It is well to give 

a table to show this — 

Annual Rates pee Annual Rates 

1000 LIVING PER 1000 BIRTHS 

Diarrhcea 

and Infant 

Birth Rate. Death Rate. Enteritis Mortality 

(under two Rate, 
years). 

England and Wales .... 23.8 13.7 20.4 105 
97 great towns (including 

London) 25.0 15.0 26.1 114 

145 smaller towns 23.9 13.1 19.8 104 

England and Wales less 

the 242 towns 22.2 12.4 12.6 93 

London 24.3 14.4 27.6 104 

Consider the reason for this difference in the death rates 
— 114 deaths per 1000 in the great towns, 104 in the 
smaller towns, and 93 in the country districts. Does not this 
prove that children are killed by the conditions into which 
they are born. It is obvious that urbanisation, with all that 



38 MOTHERHOOD 

it means of unhealthy living, with factory work and the 
employment of women, exerts a profound effect on the 
lives and health of little children. 

A portion of infant and child mortality represents, I 
well know, the removal from life of diseased children who 
ought never to have been born, and would not have been 
born under different sexual conditions, for this, above all, 
is a question of instructed motherhood. I am not forget- 
ting this side of the problem. But these children, doomed 
to death from the time they are conceived, represent a 
fraction only of our infant mortality. The vast majority 
of babies are born healthy ; it is we who kill them. Though 
the fact of the falling birth rate is being shouted aloud with 
an ever-increasing fear and insistence, the plain, simple 
fact is neglected ; it is absurd to go on having more babies 
if we can't first care enough to keep alive the babies that 
we have. There are still too many births for our civilisa- 
tion to look after; we are still unfit to be trusted with a 
rising birth rate.^ 

Let us consider now how our neglect acts on the chil- 
dren who fight through the first years of infancy. 1 can 
take a few facts only chosen almost at hazard from the mass 
of similar evidence in the Educational Report. In London, 
out of 294,000 children medically examined, 101,000 or 
nearly half, were found to be in need of treatment. In 
England and Wales 391,352 children of school age were 
medically attended. A summary of the returns shows a 
wide prevalence of verminous uncleanness, the percentage 
being 18.1 per cent, for the heads and 11.8 per cent, for 
the bodies of the children. Again the figures show unclean 
conditions to be most prevalent in the towns, in some in- 
1 H. G. Wells, Mankind in the Making, p. 88. 



WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 39 

stances the percentage rising as high as thirty unclean chil- 
dren out of each hundred children examined. I ask you 
to think what this implies. 

The nutrition of the children is equally bad, the different 
counties varying in percentage between five and twenty. 
Stockton-on-Tees has the unenviable distinction of standing 
the highest — thirty out of each hundred of its children 
showing signs of malnutrition. The same Report shows 
the fatal prevalence among the children of rickets, 'eye 
disease, discharging ears, and diseases of the throat and 
nose.^ The proportion of defective teeth is higher than 
any malady and often exceeds seventy and eighty per cent. 
of the school entrants. 

We should note that insufficient or unsuitable food is the 
chief cause of malnutrition and illness in children, and in- 
vestigations seem to show that wrong feeding is the more 
prevalent. Thus Dr, Gould, writing of the children he 
examined in Bolton, says, "it is obvious that defective nutri- 
tion is due to dietetic ignorance on the parents' part or to 
parental neglect." Dr. Macdonald of Northampton, re- 
porting on 448 cases examined in 1914, corroborates this 
view, stating in the course of his report of adenoidal chil- 
dren, "Many are suffering, not from insufficiency of food 
(that, I think, far from common in Northampton), but 
from bad food and badly prepared food." Again, 
Dr. Orr of Shrewsbury writes, "The subject of unsuitable 
food is a very important one. The women of the working 
classes often show a surprising ignorance of the proper 
methods of cooking for family requirements, a want of 
knowledge of the value and suitability of food stuffs, and 

1 The towns with the highest percentages are as follow : Morley 
31, Chadderton 32, Bacup 38, Stockton 34, Liverpool 38, Salford 32, 
Stockport 39, Mansfield 49. 



40 MOTHERHOOD 

too often a general incompetence respecting household 
management."^ I may add as corroboration an instance 
from my own knowledge; one that would be comic, if it 
were not so piteous. A party of poor workings girls were 
invited to a meal ; they were asked what they would like to 
have to eat. They answered, "Bread and pickles," and 
added, "Pickles are so sustaining !" 

Who can doubt the greatness of the evil that is going 
on.'' I could add many more facts at least equally im- 
pressive with the few that I have given, all witnessing to 
weakness in the constitution of our children, to disease 
and dirt, and every other painful result of ignorance and 
neglect. And does not all this speak of unfit motherhood ; 
of women ill-trained as women and incapacitated for their 
supreme duty.? There is failure somewhere. We have to 
find out where that failure is. 

For I wish to make it very clear that I am not blaming 
the individual mother. What I do blame are the conditions 
of our civilisation that have called her into being. I have 
before me the admirable but infinitely distressing book, 
Maternity: Letters from Working Women. They are the 
outcome of an inquiry into the condition of working-class 
motherihood made by the Wom|en's Co-opierative Guild. 
Nothing that I can say, or that any other writer could say, 
can have the reality and the bitter vividness of these letters 
written by the women themselves. I am able to quote only 
scattered sentences taken from a few letters just as they 
come and without special selection. 

(1) Mother Injured in Girlhood 

" Through being left without a mother when a baby — 

1 These quotations are taken from the Report of the Board of 
Education, p. 70. 



WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 41 

father was a very large farmer and girls were expected to 
do mens work — /, at the age of sixteen, lifted weights that 
deformed the pelvis hones, therefore making confinement a 
very difficult case. I have five fine healthy girls, but the 
boys have all had to have the skull-bones taken away to get 
them past the pelvis, . . , I wish more could he done to 
train growing girls to be more careful." 

(2) A Wage-Earning Mother 
" / myself had some very hard tiTues, as I had to go out 
to work in the mill. I was a weaver and we had a lot of 
lifting to do. My first baby was born before its time, front 
me lifting my piece off the loom on to my shoulder. . . . 
If I had been able to take care of myself I should not have 
had to suffer as I did for seven weeks before the baby was 
born, and for three months after, and then there was the 
baby suffering as well, as he was a weak little 
thing for a long time, and cost pounds that could 
have been saved had I been able to stay at home and look 
after myself.'* 

(3) A Mother's Injury to Her Daughters 
" / am very pleased to say that, having one of the best 
of husbands, I suffered nothing during pregnancy, only 
ailments of my own caused through my mother having to 
work in the brickyard during her pregnancy with me. That, 
I am sorry to say, is the cause of my own and my sister's 
illness . . . and that thing will go on until women give 
up hard work during pregnancy.'' 

(4) Worked too Hard as a Girl 
^*My third child was horn nine years after the second. 



4a MOTHERHOOD 

. . . She lived six hours, and was convulsed from hirth. 
The doctor\s opinion was that I had worked too hard as a 
girl lifting heavy weights, therefore weakening the whole 



(5) The Results or Poverty 
" I think a great deal of suffering is caused to the mother 
and child during pregnancy by lack of nourishment and 
rest, combined with bad housing arrangements. The 
majority of tvorking wom^n before marriage have been 
used to standing a great deal at their work, bringing about 
much suffering which does not tell seriously until after 
marriage, particularly during pregnancy. . . . / be- 
lieve that bad housing arrangements have a very bad effect 
on mothers during pregnancy. I know of streets of houses 
where there are large factories built, taking the whole of 
the daylight away from the kitchen, where the woman 
spends the best part of her life. On the top of this you get 
the continual grinding of machinery. The mother wonders 
what she has to live for; if there is another baby coming 
she hopes it will be dead when it is born. The result is she 
begins to take drugs. . . .All this tells on the woman, 
physically and mentally; can you wonder at women turn- 
ing to drink? " 

(6) Another Case of Poverty and Overwork 
"The first part of my life I spent in a screw factory from 
six in the morning till five at night, and after tea used to 
do my washing and cleaning. I only left two weeks and 
three weeks before my first children were born. After that 
I took in lodgers and washing, and always worked up till an 
hour or so before baby was born. The results were that 



WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR ¥3 

three of my girls suffer with their insides. None are able 
to have a baby. One dear boy mas born ruptured on ac- 
count of my previous hard work." 

(7) The Evil of Sexual Ignorance 
" Judging from my own experience, a fair amount of 
knowledge at the commencement of pregnancy would do a 
lot of good. One may have a good mother who would be 
willing to give information, but to people like myself your 
mother is the last person you would talk to about yourself 
or your state. . . .7 have learnt the most useful things 
since my children grew up. The idea that you impress the 
child all through with your habits and ways, or that its 
health is to a great extent hindered or helped by your own 
wellbei/ng, was quite unknown to me." 

(8) Another Case 
" When I was married, I had to leave my own town to 
go out into the world, as it were, and when I had to have 
my first baby, I knew absolutely nothing, not even how 
they were born. I had many a time thought how cruel 
(not wilfully, perhaps) my mother was not to tell me all 
about the subject when I left home. . . . When my 
baby was born I had been in my labour for thirty-six hours, 
and did not know what was the matter with me. 
It was only a seven-months baby, and I feel quite sure if I 
had been told anything about pregnancy it would not have 
happened. I carried a heavy piece of oilcloth, which 
brought on labour. , , . I knew very little about feed- 
ing children, when they, cried I gave them the breast. If I 
had known then what I know now my children would have 
been living. I was ignorant, and had to suffer severely 



44? MOTHERHOOD 

for it, for it nearly cost me my life, and also those of my 
children. I very often ponder over this part of my life. 
I must not say anything about my mother now, because she 
is dead, but I carmot help thinking what might have been 
if she had told me.^' 

(9) Healthy Motherhood, Given as a Contrast 

" Although I have had eight children and one miscar- 
riage, I am afraid my experience would not help you in the 
least, as I am supposed to be one of those ivomen who can 
stand anything. During my pregnancy, I have always 
been able to do my own work. 

" With the boys labour has only lasted twenty minutes, 
girls a little longer. I have never needed a doctor's help, 
and it has always been over before he came. . . . My 
idea is that everything depends on how a woman lives, and 
how healthy she was born. I had the advantage of never 
having to work before I was married and never have wcmted 
for money, so when the struggle came I had a strong con- 
stitution to battle with it all.'' 

(10) Another Fortunate Case 
" I must be one of the fortunate ones. I have always 
had fairly good health during pregnancy and good times 
at confinements and getting up. . . . I owe my good 
health to being well nourished and looked \after by my 
mother when I was a growing girl. I think if all young 
girls of to-day are properly cared for, it will make all 
the difference to the mothers of the future, and save much 
suffering during pregnancy and after." 

I should like to quote further from these letters, which 
have filled me with a passion of protest and pity. But why 



WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 45 

should I go on bringing fresh arguments to prove what 
already is sufficiently clear? 

Give but a moment's attention to the facts that stand 
out in these eight summarised cases, and at once you will 
grasp what is wrong. These mothers have not been equal 
to their task of child-bearing ; we have demanded from 
them too much. We have permitted the weakening of their 
constitutions from girlhood with unsuitable and too heavy 
work, and we have allowed them to grow up and marry 
sexually ignorant. What wonder that so many have failed 
in their supreme work of motherhood. The women bitterly 
feel this failure ; many of them are convinced of the evils 
that have resulted to themselves and their children from 
their own overstrain through work and their ignorance of 
sexual h^^giene and mother-craft. 

Take now a few briefly summarised results of all these 
three hundred and forty-eight examined cases of mother- 
hood. We find the following figures : Total number of live 
births, 1,396, 80 still-births and 218 miscarriages. These 
figures speak for themselves. It is probable all miscar- 
riages are not given, but even those that are stated show a 
pre-natal death rate of 21.3 per 100 deaths. And we 
have no record of abortions, which, without doubt, are very 
numerous. According to some medical authorities the fre- 
quency of abortion "is believed to be about 20 to 25 per 
cent, of all pregnancies." Consider the following facts : 
two of these women each had ten miscarriages ; one woman 
had eight miscarriages and no living child, while a second 
woman, after suffering seven miscarriages, consoled her 
motherhood by adopting an orphan boy; another woman 
gave birth to five dead children ; the record of still another 
woman is three still-births and four miscarriages. The last 



46 MOTHERHOOD 

of these mothers writes : " I had to work very hard to do 
everything for my little family, and after that I never had 
any more children to live. I either miscarried or they 
were still-born." 

The post-natal deaths are also numerous. Of the three 
hundred and forty-eight mothers, eighty-six (or 24.7 per 
cent.) lost children in the first year of life. The total 
number of deaths rises to 122, or 8.7 per 100 live births, 
and it should be noted that 50 per cent., or one half of these 
deaths, occurred during the first month of infantile life or 
were due to wrong birth conditions when death was after 
the first month. 

It seems useless to comment further upon these' facts ; 
the figures speak with sufficient clearness for themselves. 
I would ask you, however, to remember them ; I would ask 
you to try to understand all that they mean of our deplor- 
able neglect of motherhood. 

For long we have been persistently assuming that the 
characteristics of the child at birth are genetic or hereditary 
and therefore can be but slightly affected by a favourable 
or an adverse nurture. This is a monstrous error. Very 
few indeed are the defects and the diseases that are inevit- 
able and part of the birth-inheritance, rather they are 
traceable directly to malnutrition or poison in the mother, 
and by this means the fresh life is weakened or infected 
before it is born. So much the greater is the importance of 
ante-natal nurture. The child can be saved only through 
the mother. Inferior mothers must result in inferior chil- 
dren. And what we need now for the future maintenance 
and welfare of our race in adequate numbers and quality, 
is a speedy and practical recognition of the truth that 
nothing will avail us if we so educate, train, and work our 



WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 47 

women that as mothers they fail in their creative 
hour. 

Let us now consider briefly how these matters stand in 
our land at the present time, and let us examine them in 
the light of these facts we have established of an over- 
burdened and, therefore, unfit motherhood. And the first 
thing we find is that the special conditions brought about 
by the Great War have greatly increased the problem we 
have to solve. I have already referred to the Report issued 
by the Health of Munition Workers Committee on " Em- 
ployment of Women " and " Hours of Work." They give 
summary accounts of the conditions of women's labour and 
what is actually going on. I confess that what is stated 
has filled me with the gravest fears. I will give a few of 
the facts as they are set down. 

*' The engagement of women in the manufacture of 
munitions presents many features of outstanding interest. 
Probably the most striking is the universal character of 
their response to the country's call for help; but of equal 
social and industrial significance is the extension of the em- 
ployment of married women, the extension of the employ- 
ment of young girls and the revival of the employment 
of women at night.'' 

With regard to the class of women employed we learn — 

" The munition workers of to-day include dressmakers, 
laundry workers, shop assistants, university and art stu- 
dents, women and girls of every social grade and of no 
previous wage-earning experience, also, in large numbers, 
wives and widows of soldiers, many married women who 
had retired altogether from industrial life, and many again 



48 MOTHERHOOD 

who had never entered it. In the character of the response 
lies largely the secret of its industrial success^ which is 
remarkahle. The fact that women and girls of all types 
and ages have pressed and are pressing into industry shows 
a spirit of patriotism which is as finely maintained as it 
was quickly shown." 

The prodigious efforts of war are employing energies 
that have never been employed before. And there is some- 
thing fine in the obdurate courage and determination of 
women to go through with their work. The spirit of 
woman does not easily resist. Ah! there is the danger. 
It is so difficult to induce any woman to recognise the 
limits of her physical powers. I am certain, too, that this 
danger of reckless overstrain is greater in England than 
in many other lands where women are working, for here 
custom and our habits of curious prudery force a woman 
to treat her sexual life as if it did not exist. This is the 
deep root of the danger. Thus, just as I should expect, 
the report goes on — 

" Conditions of work are accepted without question and 
without complaint which, immediately detrimental to out- 
put, would, if continued, be ultimately disastrous to health. 
It is for the nation to safeguard the devotion of its workers 
by its foresight and watchfulness, lest irreparable harm 
be done to body and mi/nd both in this generation and in the 
next." 

The necessity of war has revived, after almost a century 

of disuse, the night employment of women in factories.* 

1 Night work in the textile trades was prohibited for women by 
the factory legislation of 1844. The custom disappeared gradually 
in Great Britain and other countries. Then it was finally banished 
by international agreement from twelve European countries at the 
International Conference of Bonn, 1906. 



WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 49 

The report shows the deterioration in the health and energy 
of the women, due partly to overstrain from want of sleep 
and proper rest, but also to the difficulty the workers find 
in eating at night. We read — 

" In one factory visited at night the manager stated that 
fatigue prevented many of the women making the effort 
to go from there to the mess room, though m itself the room 
was attractive. In another, visited also hy night, several 
women were lying, during the meal hour, beside their piles 
of heaped-up work; while others, later, were asleep beside 
their machines, facts which bear additional witness to the 
relative failure of these hours. A few women of rare 
physique withstand the stravn sufficiently to maintain a 
reasonable output, but the flagging effort of the majority 
is not only unproductive at the moment, it has its influence 
also upon the subsequent output, which suffers as in a 
vicious circle.'* 

The report shows plainly the destruction that is taking 
place in the home life of the workers. It states — 

" While the urgent necessity for women's work remains, 
and while the mother's time and the time of the elder girls 
is largely given to the making of munitions, the home and 
the younger children must inevitably suffer. Where home 
conditions are bad, as they frequently are, where a long 
working day is aggravated by long hours of travelling, 
and where, in addition, housing accommodation is inade- 
quate, family life is defaced beyond recognition,'* 

Again, take this passage — 



50 MOTHERHOOD 

" Often, far from offering a rest from the fatigue of the 
day, the home conditions offer hut fresh aggravation. A 
day begun at 4 or even 3.30 a.m., for work at 6 a.m., fol- 
lowed by fourteen^ hours in the factory and another two or 
two and a half hours on the journey back, may end at 10 or 
10.30 p.m., vn a home or lodging where the prevaili/ng 
degree of overcrowding precludes all possibility of com- 
fortable rest. Beds are never empty and rooms are never 
aired, for in a badly crowded district the beds, like the 
occupants, are organised in day and night shifts. In such 
conditions of confusion, pressure and over-crowding, home 
life can have no existence.'' 

The overstrain of the women is increased by their diffi- 
culty in obtaining living accommodation near to the 
factories. 

" It is far from uncommon now to find some two or three 
hours spent on the journey each way, generally under the 
fatiguing conditions of an overcrowded tram or train, 
often with long waits and a severe struggle before even 
standing room can be obtained. The superintendent of a 
factory situated in a congested district stated that the 
women constantly arrive with their clothes torn i/n the 
struggle for a train, the satchel in which they bring their 
tea being sometimes torn away. The workers were of an 
exceptionally refined type, to whom such rough handling 

1 The three systems of employment adopted are as follows — 

One shift of 13-14 hours (the overtime system) ; 

Two shifts of 12 hours; 

Three shifts of 8 hours. 
The report strongly recommends the universal adoption of the 8-hour 
shift system. 



WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 51 

should be altogether unfamiliar, hut they bore these con- 
ditions xmth cheerful resolution." 

What are the results going to be? Women have no 
right to bear such conditions with cheerful resolution. 
And it is just this acceptance of so many things that never 
ought to be accepted that fills me with apprehension. 
You see, I believe there is a much deeper cause than the 
urgencies of the war which is causing w^omen to spend 
their strength in industrial work. Did I not think this, 
there would be little need for me to write. 

I know that women's labour at the present crisis is a 
matter of necessity. How the work is to be done with 
the least possible injury to the workers is the question 
of the present. For it is equally momentous to the future 
that the standard of health and well-being of the country 
should be maintained. The problem is, how much work 
and of what kind can women do combined with perfect 
health. The health we must have, for it is requisite for the 
life of the race. 

No doubt Nature is prodigal in her gifts of energy to 
women and provides enough for high-pressure work. But 
what we forget is this : the total amount of energy is 
strictly limited, and if women use up in work the energy 
that ought to be stored for child-bearing, they are pre- 
paring the way for an enfeebled race. Thus the problem 
of women's labour will not be solved until her work no 
more unfits her to be a mother than man's work unfits him 
to be a father. Woman sows in her flesh for the race, 
and because the demands of sex are stronger upon her she 
has to store more for the future than the man ; she cannot 
expend so much in work in the present. 



52 MOTHERHOOD 

I have tried now to show in this and the preceding 
chapter the present and urgent need of an inquiry into 
the conditions of motherhood. The facts we have con- 
sidered give, I feel, sufficient proof of our immense failure. 
Our attempt must be to bring order where we have had 
confusion. We have got to end this disastrous squander- 
ing of women's energies; a bankrupt expenditure which 
must result in wholesale waste in health and the lives of 
little children. 

And I do not allude here only to the obvious immediate 
remedies. These will have to be made. The efforts for 
reducing infantile mortality must be such as will have 
lasting and substantial effect. Feeble tinkerings with such 
a question are the deepest foolishness. England can be 
indifferent to the health and well-being of women no longer, 
for she cannot afford to lose children by tens of thousands 
and to let the survivors be maimed and weakened by the 
million. 

This, however, is not all; no legislation or social recon- 
struction — not any outward change, can accomplish alone 
what needs to be done. I am very certain of this. The 
wretched confusion and failure in efficient motherhood, 
which repeats itself everywhere, again and again, and in all 
classes of women, must be due to something more than 
industrialism and the hideous, ugly pressure of work for 
women, now so startlingly increased by the urgencies of 
war ; it must be due to something stronger and more funda- 
mental, to some inward cause. We must, I think, look to 
find some general and essential failure in women them- 
selves — some unsoundness in their desires and their ideals, 
and in the principles they have set down for the conduct of 
their lives. 



WOMEN AS AFFECTED BY THE WAR 53 

We have got to find what this failure is. 

Note.— The Annual Report for 1915 of the Chief Medical Officer 
of the Board of Education has been issued since this chapter was 
written. The conditions have not materially changed since the pre- 
vious year. Ten per cent, of all the children attending the Ele- 
mentary Schools suffer from malnutrition, due largely to unsuitable 
and insufficient food. There is still a large amount of uncleanli- 
ness — the returns show about 16 per cent, of the children have dirty 
heads, and 15 per cent, dirty bodies. 

A further evil has arisen from the greatly increased employment 
of children of school age; during one year 45,000 children have left 
school before the usual age, and 15,000 are temporarily employed 
in agriculture. In addition, more children are working as "half- 
timers" and as workers out of school hours. This wasteful employ- 
ment of the young life of the future must, as the Report states, lead 
to physical and mental deterioration. 



PART II 

THE MATERNAL INSTINCT IN THE MAKING 

"But what is the use of this history, what is the 
use of all this minute research? I well know that 
it will not produce a fall in the price of paper, a rise 
in that of crates of rotten cabbages, or other serious 
events of that kind, which cause fleets to be manned 
and set people face to face intent on one another's 
extermination. The insect does not aim at so much 
glory. It confines itself to showing us life in the 
inexhaustible variety of its manifestations ; it helps 
us to decipher in some small measure the obscurest 
book of all — the book of ourselves." — Henei Fabre. 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER III 

INSECT PARENTHOOD 

The necessity of beginning the investigation of motherhood before 
human parenthood — The instinct not fixed but dependent on 
circumstances and the conditions of life — Experiments in family- 
life — Bewildering diversity in strength of parental instinct — 
Numerous cases of insect home makers — Domestic economy of 
bees and ants — Does the word "instinct" explain — Parental 
devotion of the scarabee beetles — Fab re's account — Important to 
note (1) connection between form of union or marriage of the 
sexes and parental devotion, (2) connection between degree of 
intelligence in tke parent and amount of care devoted to the 
young. 



CHAPTER III 



INSECT PARENTHOOD 



"There can be few people alive who have not remarked on occasion 
that men are the creatures of circumstances. But it is one thing 
to state a belief of this sort in some incidental application, and 
quite another to realise it completely." — H. G. Wells. 

This statement of Mr. Wells that I have placed at the 
head of the chapter will explain the reason why I find it 
necessary to go back to the grey primeval dawn of life to 
start my inquiry into motherhood. I want to establish 
that the instinct of caring for the young is not fixed, that 
it does not always develop in the same way or in the same 
parent, but rather that it is a quality, fluid and of inde- 
terminate possibilities, that can be set and shaped by the 
conditions of life as wax is shaped by a mould. And I 
know no other way to make this clear. The few scattered 
facts that I have been able to gather together tell the 
miracles of the parental instinct. They must, I think, 
teach us humility. Let us throw aside the garments of 
conceit and false learning, and recognise that in reality 
we know almost nothing about anything, if things are 
probed to the bottom. 

In the widest treatment of the maternal instinct it will 
not suffice to narrow our attention to the function of 
human motherhood, or to take up our study of the condi- 
tions relating to the mother and the child as we find them 
amongst us to-day. Were I to do this and to attempt at 

59 



60 MOTHERHOOD 

once to bring forward my own views, with the ref orms that 
I wish for in this matter, my work would be as a building 
without a firm foundation, more or less uncertain, and for 
this reason valueless. 

To get a proper grip of all that is here concerned we 
must understand that the maternal instinct is the deepest 
and strongest instinct in woman. It is in the emotions 
and actions either directly arising from or connected with 
motherhood that we find the real difference between the 
sexes. In its essence the parental instinct belongs to 
woman alone. The male may be infected with its energy — 
we witness this among birds, as well as in humbler animals, 
where the duties of caring for offspring are shared and, 
in some cases, carried out by the male alone; but man 
possesses, as yet, its faint analogy only. It is the most 
primary of all women's qualities.^ 

Now, why is this ? Why is woman's being so much more 
strongly infected with motherhood than the man's with 
fatherhood.'^ 

It is a question not so readily to be answered as it might 
appear. If we find the explanation in the intimate con- 
nection between the mother and the child we have not, I 
think, exhausted the matter. We must not forget that 
other questions remain behind unanswered, all centring 
round the one question to which an adequate answer is so 
difficult to find : How has this arisen ? The fact has to be 
explained that the sharp separation in the parental im- 
pulse and the parental duties, so strong amongst us, has 
not always existed; that there are many examples in the 
history of life which show an exactly opposite condition. 

iSee The Truth about Woman (pp. 247-270), where this difference 
between the sexes is treated from a different point of view. 



INSECy PARENTHOOD 61 

To find the clue it will thus be necessary to turn our 
attention to the earlier stages of life where, in particular 
among insects, reptiles, fishes, and birds, we find the widest 
possible range of difference in the expression of the 
parental instinct and the most varied relations existing 
between parents and offspring. Here indeed, among these 
pre-human parents, we can study the maternal instinct in 
the making. There are many new and strange facts for us 
to learn. 

I know well the dangers of such an inquiry. To many, 
who will allow its interest, it will yet appear as being 
profitless. There is perhaps some justification for this 
view. Certainly any attempt to establish the conditions of 
human motherhood from examples in natural history must 
be far from conclusive. All comparisons of our own habits 
and impulses with their earlier expression as we see them in 
the animals are somewhat unsatisfactory. The lines on 
which human motherhood has developed and the conditions 
which have so largely helped to shape its expression, differ 
vastly from many of the other needs and circumstances 
which govern the activities of parents in the lower forms 
of life. Chief among these differences is the more complex 
character of the human brain, which is correlated with the 
far greater length of time that the human infant is depend- 
ent on its mother. 

Yet, allowing for all this difference, I believe that there 
is much for us to learn from the life-histories of these pre- 
human parents. At least we find wonderful agreement 
prevailing between the conduct which we think reason dic- 
tates to us and that which we hold instinct dictates to the 
animals. And the question will be forced upon us: How 
far back in the record of life did the fierce mother-instinct 



62 MOTHERHOOD 

exist? We shall find many unheeded examples, alike of its 
operation and of its failure to operate, which, if we consider 
them, in the light they may possibly cast forward on our 
own problems, will not fail to bring us to some unexpected 
conclusions. Life is full of surprises, and this matter of the 
care of the young affords not the least of them. Nowhere 
are the links between the present and the past more fascinat- 
ingly represented. 

I am far indeed from being .able to explain many facts 
I have come to know. I have been puzzled often, and the 
suggestions I offer I know may be wrong. The early stages 
in the growth of parental care, even among the animals 
whose habits are known to us, are often enshrouded in mys- 
tery, baffling the penetration of the most patient and care- 
ful inquirers. Nevertheless, during recent years a host of 
facts have been gathered together which throw much new 
light not only on the theme .of pre-human parenthood, but 
also on the probable action of the parental instinct as it has 
slowly developed through the ages. 

But apart from such more speculative considerations 
there are yet other aspects to be considered, such as the 
effect of the environment, the conditions of the home, and 
the type of union between the male and the female, all of 
which have their influence on the duration and kind of care 
shown by animal parents to their offspring. Some explana- 
tion must be sought for the almost bewildering diversity 
which we find in this relationship ; for while the young of 
some animals (and often among low types where least 
we should expect it) are jealously guarded and cared for by 
at least one of the parents, in others there is no trace of 
such sacrifice and solicitude, and the young are thrown on 
to the world, orphaned before they are born, and left to live 



INSECT PARENTHOOD 63 

or die as chance decrees. Why is this? Why is the 
parental instinct so actively strong in some cases, so absent 
in others? Can we, indeed, hope to find the answer? If 
we can do this, we shall learn much to surprise and also to 
instruct us. 

In the higher types of animals, with the longer period 
of infancy, some amount of care for the young is always 
shown by the mother. All the mammals, without exception, 
nurse their offspring for a longer or shorter per id d. 
Among the birds the young in many species are tended by 
both parents, and we find many beautiful examples of 
parental fosterage and protection. But we find also 
species, like the cuckoos, which thrust the parental duties 
on to others ; and there are others, such as the megapodes, 
where the mother trusts the incubation of her eggs to 
natural agencies, and after placing them in a position to 
get the heat generated by decaying vegetation or that 
derived from hot springs, leaves them, and exhibits no 
apparent care for the future welfare of the family. 

Here is something to give us food for thought. And 
the same surprises meet us as we descend the scale of hfe. 
The reptiles show little or no parental care, but strangely 
enough the toads and frogs, and many fishes, furnish us 
with examples of remarkable forethought, or apparent 
forethought, for their offspring; and, let it be noted, this 
solicitude is in most cases shown by the father and not by 
the mother. Even more remarkable are the insects, among 
whom, though still lower in the scale, we find the most 
wonderful cases of parental sacrifice to be met with any- 
where in life. Some of .these little creatures, indeed, seem 
to be endowed with a devotion to their young so insistent, 
that their lives can be described only as a passion of sacri- 



64 MOTHERHOOD 

fice. In truth they live but to give life and die. And 
accompanying this parental sacrifice, first in supplying 
food for embryonic development, and also, in some cases, 
affording fosterage and protection during the early stages 
of growth, we meet the most varied and wonderful be- 
haviour which seems to prove an intelligence that thinks 
and plans ; and, whatever explanation we try to find for 
these acts of devotion, we still are far from understanding 
them. Life has its secrets, and we shall probably fail to 
penetrate these mysteries. All that is possible to us is to 
inquire humbly that we may learn a few truths. 

But for the sake of clearness, let me cease from gen- 
eralising and direct our attention to certain definite exam- 
ples. I will select first the model household of the Mino- 
taurus Typhosus in the order Coleoptera — 

"The female digs a large burrow which is often more than a yard 
and a half deep and which consists of spiral staircases, landings, 
passages and numerous chambers. The male loads the earth on the 
three-pronged fork that surmounts his head and carries it to the 
entrance of the conjugal dwelling. Next he goes into the fields in 
search of harmless droppings left by the sheep, he takes these down 
to the first storey of the crypt and, with the aid of his trident be- 
gins to reduce them to flour, while the mother, right at the bottom, 
collects and kneads it into huge cylindrical loaves, which will presently 
become food for the little ones. For three months, until the pro- 
visions are deemed sufficient, the unfortunate husband, without taking 
any nourishment of any kind, exhausts himself in this gigantic work. 
At last, his task is accomplished. Feeling his end is at hand, so as 
not to encumber the house with his wretched remains, he spends his 
last strength in leaving the burrow, drags himself laboriously along 
and, lonely and resigned, knowing that he is henceforth good for 
nothing, goes and dies far away amid the stones." l 

Here we have exactly the kind of example we are in 

i"The Insects' Homer," by Maurice Maeterlinck, Fortnightly Be- 
view, October 1912. 



INSECT PARENTHOOD 65 

search of, and the most important thing to observe is the 
co-operation of the father with the mother in the work of 
providing for the family: such male devotion is undoubt- 
edly exceptional. 

Some measure of parental solicitude is almost universally 
common, and even among the lowliest creatures we find con- 
vincing proof of this. Among the species of limited re- 
sources, where the least care is bestowed and the young are 
left to look after themselves, the eggs are placed by the 
mother in a suitable environment so that the young can be 
sure of a sufficiency of food until they can feed them- 
selves. The numerous caterpillars offer a well-known 
illustration of this primitive care, where it is common for 
the eggs to be attached to the food-plant by means of 
some adhesive covering. More striking is fthe case of 
certain weevils, which, in order to endow their young with a 
suitable home, possess the art of rolling a leaf in which 
the eggs are laid, thus forming a nursery, which serves as 
board and lodging in one. 

Fabre, in a wonderful account of the most skilful of 
these workers, the Poplar weevil, states that not far from 
the scroll, made and laboriously rolled by the mother, we 
almost always find the male. But do not make a mistake. 
The weevil father is not moved by devotion to the family in- 
terests as was the father in the last case we examined. No, 
rather he is filled with the egoistic desire of the male. But 
I must give the history as Fabre relates it, fearing to spoil 
his beautiful account by my own halting description — 

"What is he doing there, the idler? Is he watching the work as a 
mere inquisitive onlooker? From time to time I see him take his 
stand behind the manufacturer, in the groove of the fold, hang on to 
a cylinder and join for a little in the work. This is a means of de- 



66 MOTHERHOOD 

daring his flame and urging his merits. After several refusals and 
notwithstanding advances made by a brief collaboration at the scroll, 
the impatient one is accepted. For ten minutes the rolling is sus- 
pended. The male still looks on. Sooner or later a new visit is paid 
to the worker by the dawdler, who, under pretence of assisting, 
plants his claws for a moment into the rolling piece, plucks up cour- 
age and renews his exploits with the same vigour as though nothing 
had yet happened. And this is repeated four or five times during 
the making of a single cigar." 

Here, it may be remarked in passing, we seem to see 
the first faint expression of the father's interest in the 
family, which, if I may hazard a guess, may have started 
in this way as a means of gaining his desire with the female. 
The correctness of this surmise will receive considerable 
confirmation as we proceed with our inquiry. And if 
analogies with animal conduct were not so apt to be mis- 
leading, I would venture to suggest the persistence of the 
same egoistic factor among many human fathers. But 
for the present I must leave this question. 

From the very beginning of life parental sacrifice is 
more common in the mother; it is in exceptional cases 
that her devotion is shared by the father. But such good 
fathers are of special importance to our inquiry. Even 
more interesting are those species among which the father 
takes all charge of the young, while the mother spends 
her time away from the family. Nor is this departure from 
what we may call the normal order of the family so sur- 
prising as at first sight it may seem, if we can account for 
the necessity under which probably it arose and seek to 
explain it. 

The welfare of the young is a matter of vital urgency ; 
instinct dictates to the animals what reason dictates to 
us. Nature, as if to show her resourcefulness, her love of 



INSECT PARENTHOOD 67 

successful experiments, is always discovering contrary ways 
of attaining the same end. And what I wish to make clear 
is this : when, for some reason that we do not know, the 
family cares are neglected by the mothers, the work of 
tending and feeding the young is undertaken by the fathers. 
I shall have much more to say on this question at a later 
stage, and I ask you to keep it persistently in the focus 
of your attention. I desire to emphasise it at once. What- 
ever groups of animals we survey, we shall find examples 
of this replacement of the mother by the father, new aspects 
of the family, which may afford us a better grip of some 
problems that at present elude us. 

The reality of the mother's regard for the young is 
proved among many insects by the building of a nest to 
safeguard the family. The Anthidium, or tailor-bee, and 
the Chalicodoma, a species of wild bee, afford illustrations 
of this maternal forethought. In the former case the eggs, 
when laid, are placed in the ground, protected in cotton- 
felt satchels made by the mother from fibre which she 
scratches with her mandibles from the cobwebby stalks 
of the yellow centaury ; the Chalicodoma works with 
cement and gravel carefully selected from some ruined 
building, and with such difficult material she fashions her 
nursery. Even more remarkable is the home of the Maga- 
chilles, or leaf-cutting bee. The mother bee, using her 
mandibles as scissors, cuts pieces from the leaves of the 
trees, wherewith she forms thimble-shaped wallets to contain 
the honey and eggs ; the larger oval pieces which she cuts 
m.ake the sides and the floor, and the round pieces the lid 
or door. These leaf -formed thimbles are placed in a row, 
one on top of the other, sometimes as many as a dozen 
being used. The c^dinder thus formed is fitted into the 



68 MOTHERHOOD 

deserted home of some other insect, such as the tunnels of 
fat earth-worms, the apartments bored in the trunks of 
trees by the larvae of the Capricorn beetles, or, failing 
these, a reed stump or crevice in the wall is selected. But 
the choice of the home is always carefully made, it would 
seem, according to the tastes of the mothers. This struc- 
ture, in part made and in part borrowed, forms the leaf- 
cutter's nest."*^ 

Numerous cases of home-making might be recorded, 
and the difficulty rests in the selection. Many spiders and 
the book scorpion carry their eggs in a silken bag attached 
to the under surface of the body. There is a case recorded 
that shows heroic devotion on the part of one spider 
mother. She was placed (in order that her behaviour might 
be watched) in the pit of an ant-lion. At once the enemy 
siezed the eggs and tore them from her charge. Then 
the mother, though she was driven out of the pit, returned 
and chose to be dragged in and buried alive rather than 
desert her charge.^ 

A regular process of incubation is practised by the 
mother earwig, and the young, when hatched, keep close 
to her for protection. Special food for the young is 
prepared by many mothers, as, for instance, among the 
apidce, who prepare a disgorged food in the form of a 
sweet milk juice. The Hymenoptera mothers, upon whom 
the cares of motherhood devolve in their fulness, provide 
board and lodging for their family. Stores of insects are 
caught and preserved in the nursery larder, being cun- 
ningly paralysed so that live food may be ready when 

1 Fabre, "The Leaf Cutters," English Review, March 1915. 

2 These cases are taken from Pycraft, The Infancy of Animals, 
and the different works of Fabre, Social Life in the Insect World, 
The Life and Love of the Insect, Insect Life, etc. 



INSECT PARENTHOOD 69 

needed by the children. These clever mothers, as Fabre 
has shown us, become masters of a host of arts for the bene- 
fit of a family which their faceted eyes will never see. 

Of the domestic economy of the bees and ants whole 
volumes might be, and have been, written. The habits of 
the termites, the so-called white ants, are less widely known, 
although they show one of the most remarkable develop- 
ments of the family that I have met. Each colony is really 
a patriarchal family, in which the members, all the descend- 
ants of a single pair, live in a community, and work in 
different ways. All the individuals are at first true males 
and females. Some of these develop slowly, but grow up 
perfect insects able to form new families. But the workers 
and the soldiers have to pass a period of youthful servitude 
in the community. These develop quickly, and grow up 
blind and wingless, and their reproductive organs remain in 
a condition of arrested development. Some of these are 
workers, and carry out the duties of the community ; others 
at the same time develop jaws and heads of enormous size. 
It is their duty to defend the colony. And from this has 
come about the strange condition of their being so altered 
and trained for their special work that they cannot pass 
on to the normal life and normal duties of perfect 
individuals. 

Among the bees and some social wasps there is a further 
step, and only females are selected to do household work, 
and modified so that they lose the ordinary personal in- 
stincts and devote themselves entirely to working for the 
community, while the males develop only the instincts and 
capacities of sex. In same species of wasps, however, the 
males do some work, chiefly domestic, for which they are 
fed by their foraging sisters. In the communities of ants. 



70 MOTHERHOOD 

as in the termites, there are individuals modified to serve 
as workers and as soldiers ; but here again they are all 
arrested females, and the males are used only for the 
purpose of sex. The colonies of ants last much longer 
than those of the bees and wasps, which are annual, and 
this has given the possibility of the elaboration of a very 
complex and extraordinary community.-^ 

We are always being surprised by new experiments in 
family life which show the ready adaptation of habits to 
special circumstances. A bald statement of these facts 
seems to tell very little. I leave untouched a whole series 
of devices and wonderful behaviour — so much that I should 
like to record. In all these cases we see the maternal in- 
stinct in the making. But so varied and so fitting to the 
needed purpose are the actions of these lowly parents that 
much which they do gives an impression of the inexplicable 
— even the magical. 

It is common to explain everything by the word " in- 
stinct." But does this explanation take us very far.?^ An 
elaborate instinctive capacity is probably the result of 
adding on one contrivance after another to a simpler com- 
mon habit. And this is surely the same as saying that these 
little creatures have the power of learning through ex- 
perience. A beginning of the instinct of caring for the 
young is exhibited when the mother insect chooses a 
favourable food position wherein to lay the eggs. Nor is 
it difficult to imagine how this maternal forethought may 
have grown out of an earlier habit, for it is but a step, 
though a great one, from collecting food for self — an 
instinct that may be traced back and back — to the habit of 

1 See article by J. Arthur Thomson in The New Statesman, No- 
vember 1915. 



INSECJ PARENTHOOD 71 

providing and collecting food for others. Then, this 
instinct of caring for the future being strongly fixed, it, 
in some cases and under certain favourable conditions, leads 
on and on to the specialised maternity and climax of 
parental sacrifice and devotion, such as may be illustrated 
by the admirable scarabees, or dung-beetles, of the Mediter- 
ranean region and elsewhere. 

I have given one case of perfect parents, the Minotaunis 
Typhosus; but I wish to review such conduct more fully. 
The family qualities of the dung-bettles are so devoted and 
so striking, they will repay our study. 

The late M. Fabre describes in his inimitable way the 
nursery which makes the centre and life of the scarabees' 
home. These dung-workers edify us with their morals. 
Both sexes co-operate in making the burrows which serve 
as a larder for food and a nursery for the young. They 
are cavities dug in soft earth, usually in sand, shallow in 
form, about the size of one's fist, and communicating with 
the outside by a short channel just large enough for the 
passage of the bails of dung-food. Both parents work with 
equal zeal to found a household. " The father is the pur- 
veyor of victuals and the person entrusted with the carry- 
ing away of rubbish. Alone, at different hours of the day 
he flings out of doors the earth thrown up by the mother's 
excavations ; alone he explores the vicinity of the home at 
night in quest of the pellets whereof his sons' loaves shall 
be kneaded. 

" A most careful choice of material is undertaken, and 
often the devoted husband and father is compelled to 
search long and far -for pellets freshly dropped, for 
whereas coarse bread crammed with bits of hay is good 
enough for his own and his wife's food, he is always more 



n MOTHERHOOD 

careful where the children are concerned. Legful by leg- 
ful, with slow and most patient labour, the material is 
heaped up and rolled into a ball. Then the food-ball has 
to be carried to the burrow ; no easy task. Even then the 
father's labours are not ended; on reaching the burrow, 
it is his work to shred the dung-food into flour, which he 
pours down to the mother for her to knead into the chil- 
dren's bread. Finally, when the last task is accomplished, 
the dung-father goes out alone to die. He has gallantly 
performed his duty as a paterfamilias ; he has spent him- 
self without stint to secure the prosperity of his kith and 
kin." 

The devotion of the dung-father is equalled by that of 
the dung-mother. More skilled than her spouse in domestic 
matters, she is occupied always in the home, where she 
works in the lower floor of the burrow, which she has pre- 
pared for the nursery. Here she kneads and forms the 
cylindrical loaves in which the eggs are placed. In some 
cases she does more, and we find several species of the dung- 
mothers anticipating the suckling of the young, the su- 
preme expression of maternal solicitude. These mothers 
chew the dung-food, and out of it prepare a frothy pap 
or cream, with which they cover the walls of the nest to 
form a special first meal for the emerging grub. Through- 
out her working life the dung-mother never leaves the home. 
It should be noted that her family is always a very small 
one: does this, perhaps, explain the parental devotion? 
From the first fortnight in May, when the eggs are laid, 
the mother mounts guard over her children. Never does 
she eat herself, as she will not touch the food prepared and 
needed for them. She watches through the long months 
until the coming of the autumn rains in September. Then, 



INSECT PARENTHOOD 73 

when the day of release comes at last, she returns to the 
surface, accompanied by her family. At once her children 
leave her; unmindful of her devotion, they go off to find 
food and begin life for themselves. Thereupon, having 
nothing left to do, she dies, and ends her sacrifice.^ 

Before I leave this fascinating record of the dung-beetle 
parents, space must be found wherein to note further cer- 
tain of their characteristics and habits, which are of spe- 
cial interest to my inquiry as they would appear to be di- 
rectly connected with the highly developed family qualities 
of these insects. Fabre tells us that there is no outward 
difference between the two sexes among the dung-beetles. 
I call attention to this fact, which I am not able to ex- 
plain. The scarabees are among the most beautiful of all 
insects, and the female and male share the same glory. It 
is my belief that the secondary sexual characters are di- 
rectly dependent on the occupational activities of the 
species, as also on the form of union or marriage which 
pertains and the strength of the parental emotions. Thus, 
when the male and the female are equally devoted to each 
other and to the family and its care, many cases among 
these pre-human parents seem to prove that such devotion 
and occupational union tends to lessen the ornamental sex- 
ual differences in the secondary physical characters. This 
is a question of profound interest, and demands more at- 
tention than it has yet received. 

The second fact is of even greater importance to us. 

The form of union or marriage common among the dung- 

1 Not all the scarabees live to see the adult growth of their chil- 
dren. This is done, as Fabre's observations have established by the 
Spanish Copris and some related dung-beetles, which are unique 
among non-social insects, inasmuch as the mother survives to see the 
emergence and complete metamorphosis of the family for whom she 
and her hus))and have so unremittingly toiled. 



74* MOTHERHOOD 

beetles would appear to be an unusually strict monogamy. 
These insects, as we have seen, associate in couples, and 
there is strong evidence that the male remains faithful to 
his spouse. Such admirable conduct is the more remark- 
able when we remember that the mother is held in the nur- 
sery by her duties during the greater period of the mar- 
riage ; and meantime the father has to wander far in search 
of food, making frequent excursions outside the home, but 
he resists the temptations to which these outings are likely* 
to lead, and always he returns to the home, where he wears 
himself out for his family. 

To test the strength of this conjugal fidelity Fabre made 
an experiment with the dung-beetles of whose habits I have 
before spoken, the Minotaurus Typhoeus. He placed two 
couples of these beetles in an enclosed space, marking one 
of the couples. He allowed them to begin the making of 
their burrows or homes, then he separated the couples and 
destroyed the half -made burrows. Once, twice, and a third 
time he did this, causing confusion among these peaceful 
workers. But on each occasion the couples came together 
in the s'ame order; the right male and female knew each 
other, and, taking little notice of the tumult, each time 
again they began their work of home-making. 

Five more times Fabre separated them and broke up their 
homes. The result I will give in Fabre's own beautiful 
words — 

"Things are now spoilt, sometimes each of the four that are ex- 
perimented on settles apart, sometimes the same burrow contains the 
two males or the two females, sometimes the same crypt the two 
sexes, but differently associated from what they were at first. I have 
abused my powers of repetition. Henceforth disorder reigns. My 
daily shufflings have demoralised the burrowers, a crumbling home 
always requiring to be begun afresh has put an end to lawful as- 



INSECT PARENTHOOD 75 

sedations. Respectable married life becomes impossible from the 
moment when the house falls in from day to day." 

I have now said enough, I think, to show that at many 
different levels in the insect kingdom the parental instinct 
is already developed. Pre-eminent in virtue is the be- 
haviour of the dung-beetle parents. And this is all the 
more interesting as it proves how closely related good par- 
enthood is with the conditions of the home and the form 
of marriage. 

A few more words may here be added to what has been 
said already concerning the influence of intelligence on 
instinct. It is a difficult question, but, speaking roughly, 
intelligence may be said to act in two opposite ways ; that 
is, it may aid both in the making and the unmaking of in- 
stincts.^ Thus the dung-beetles frequently change their 
conduct, and they do this by modifying their instincts 
through intelligent adaptation. It is scarcely too much 
to say that with them intelligence reaches its highest form 
of originality. Why is this.? Fab re gives us the answer. 
"The more the maternal instinct asserts itself, the higher 
does instinct ascend." 

It would be better probably if the word instinct were used 
in a more restricted sense: it should not be regarded as 
being able to explain everything. This mysterious im- 
pulse is held to direct all pre-human parents in their con- 
duct to their young. Very well ; but what of the directing 
force behind .'^ The evidence is strong thAt even the lowli- 
est creatures have their own problems, and are able to 
solve them. Can we explain otherwise the wide difference 

1 In this connection the reader is recommended to consult C. 
Lloyd-Morgan's works, in particular Animal Life and Intelligence. 
See also the interesting remarks on "De L' Amour Maternal," in 
Soci4t4s Animales, by Alfred Espinas, pp. 172-180. 



7(1 MOTHERHOOD 

ill c'oiuliul botweon parent aiul parent? Do we know what 
it is that L!;ives a special direction to the instinctive activ- 
ities in the acconipHshnient of a design greater than any 
of these parents know? Wo cannot answer fully. But in- 
stinct has its twin brother in intolHo-ence, and, actino- to- 
ovther, thev are the o^nardians oi' Hfe. 

When real things are so wonderful, what can we do but 
note them and try to understand? Not elsewhere in the 
insect world do we meet with a devotion more complete 
than that ot' both the dung-parents: not elsewhere do we 
tind a finer development of intelligence. These two things 
are related and closely dependent, the one upon the other. 
It is this fact that now I am seeking to establish. Sacrifice 
in the parent does not lead to limitation, but to expansion. 

At this early stage of life the care of the young is as a 
rule very slight, and often is confined, as I have shown, 
to the laying of the eggs in a favourable position, where 
the grub can find food. '*The higlier inspirations of the 
intellect are banished among these insects." I quote again 
from Fabre, whose opinion on this question so strongly con- 
firms all that I wish to make clear. He asserts further: 
'*The mother neglects the gentle cares of the cradle, and 
the prerogatives of the intellect, the best of all, diminish 
and disappear, so true is it that for :inimals, even as for 
ourselves, the family is the source of perfection.*' And 
again: "riaced in charge of the duration of the species, 
wliich is oi' more serious interest than the preservation of 
individuals, mrdernity awakens a marvellous foresight in 
the drowsiest intelligence. . . . The more maternity 
asserts itself, the higher does instinct ascend.'' 

We cannot get away from this ; it is one of the unal- 
terable lav.'s of life. 



CONTEXTS OF CHAPTER IV 

PARENTHOOD AMONG THE RP:PTILP:.S AND FLSIIES 
A CHAPTER ON GOOD FATIfKRS 

The parental impulse not alv/ays fixed in the mother — Arnonjr reptile^ 
and fishes, such care as is afForderl by parents is pAJ-.en most fre- 
quently by the father — Suggested reason for vhis-Prirnitive 
hatching nurseries — Parental care among frogs ;jnrj to^ids -Many 
examples of exemplary fathers- -The r]f:votion of if)'-; m^j]e stJ^:kle- 
back — The unnatural conduct of tFie fern-jle stirkjeljark -7"Fie 
emotions of the fish — Fish fathers v. ho gij^*-' !' jal 

variety in the actions of even the lowJi^si ; : . — 

Xo continuous line of development of instinct in scale of ani- 
mals — Much baffles our explanations — Suggestions important to 
my inquirj' — Revftrs^jl of s^x Jahours Is it due to failure on the 
part of the mother— Devoted pdrentj are of lugh Inteiiigencu 



CHAPTER IV 

PARENTHOOD AMONG REPTILES AND FISHES 
A CHAPTER ON GOOD FATHERS 

"Nature is a riddle without a definite solution to satisfy man's 
curiosity." — Maurice Maeterlinck. 

In this chapter I shall consider certain examples, wKich 
I think are important to establish what we have learnt in 
our examination of the insects, that the parental impulse 
was not always fixed in the mother. Among the reptiles 
and fishes the reverse is true, and what care is afforded to 
the young is given most frequently by the father.^ 

The bond between the mother and her young is directly 
dependent on their helplessness and the duration of time 
during which they require her care and attention. Young 
reptiles are from birth independent, and, as a consequence, 
there has been no stimulus to develop maternal solicitude. 
Between mother and offspring there are no ties of affection 
save in one or two exceptional cases. 

Young alligators, for example, are guarded by their 

mothers and owe more to her than they can ever know. 

She prepares a hatching nursery by scraping together a 

large mound of leaves, twigs, and fine earth, and upon this 

mound the eggs are placed about eight inches from the 

surface. Then the mother digs a hole in the river bank, 

close by, and here she waits and watches to protect her 

children. 

1 See Espinas, Des Societes Animales, especially Chapter V, "So- 
ciete domestique paternelle," pp. 236 et seq. 

79 



80 MOTHERHOOD 

A more advanced form of nursery building is practised 
by the tortoise, who prepares a sort of nest with consider- 
able care, which she afterwards cunningly conceals. But 
when once the eggs are safe she shows no further interest 
in the safety of the nest."*^ 

Most snakes bury their eggs and then leave them. But 
a more enduring maternal interest is felt by the mother 
python; she coils her body around her future family and 
jealously guards them during the period of incubation, re- 
fusing all food and never leaving her duty. 

A similar guardianship is shown to young crocodiles by 
their mothers. The home is prepared by digging a deep 
hole in the sand in which the eggs are placed, and during 
the period of incubation each mother sleeps in guard above 
her family. The naturalist Voeltzkow, to prove the reality 
of one mother crocodile's solicitude, built a fence around 
the nest just before the hatching time. Each night on her 
return, the mother broke down the fence, though each time 
it was made stronger than the last. Finally the nest was 
found to be deserted, and then it was discovered that this 
intelligent and persecuted mother had dug a hole beneath 
the fence and thence had led her brood away to safety. 

It is impossible to admire sufficiently such a case as this 
one, where we see so clearly the driving power of maternal 
solicitude in quickening^ the intelligence of even the lowliest 
mothers. Such cases are, however, few in number out of 
the S,600 species of reptiles of whom the majority are un- 
natural parents. 

1 These cases, as well as many others in this and in the next 
chapter, are taken from Pycraft's Infancy of Animals. I would 
wish to record ray indebtedness to this fascinating book. To prevent 
continuous reference notes, wherever it is not otherwise stated, the 
reader will know the cases I quote have been taken from Mi*. Py- 
craft's book. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG REPTILES 81 

But again surprises await us. Many frogs and toads, 
both the mothers and the fathers, show a really marked 
development of the familial instincts.^ An illustration of 
this care is furnished by a large tree-frog {Hyla faher) of 
Brazil, commonly known as the Ferreiro, "the smith," from 
its strange voice resembling the mallet of a smith, slowly 
and regularly striking on a metal plate. This frog pre- 
pares a nursery in the shallow waters of the ponds, where a 
basin-shaped hollow is dug in the mud. The building is 
done by the mother, the material removed being used to 
form a wall, circular in shape, which is carried up to the 
surface of the water. In this cavity the eggs are placed, 
protected against the attacks of aquatic insects and fishes. 
A Japanese tree frog {Rhacophorus schlegelii) builds a 
similar nest, but here the mother lines the walls of her 
nursery with a secretion, a kind of milk food, from her own 
body, which by rapid movements of her feet is worked into 
a froth, and in the midst of this foamy mass the eggs are 
laid. More remarkable is the nursery building of the 
"Wollunnkukk" frog (Phyllomedusa hypochondrialis) of 
Paraguay, whose habits were noted by Dr. Budgett during 
the exploration of the Paraguayan Chaco. "Whilst sitting 
near the water's edge he saw a female carrying a male upon 
her back. At last she climbed up the stem of a plant, 
reached out and caught hold of an overhanging leaf and 
climbed on to it. Both then caught hold of its edges and 
held them together; and into the funnel thus formed the 
female poured her eggs, the male fertilising them as they 
passed. The jelly surrounding the eggs served as a cement 
to hold the edges of the leaves together. Then, moving 

iThe reader is referred to a small book by St. George Mivart, 
The Common Frog. 



82 MOTHERHOOD 

up a little further, the process was repeated until the leaf 
was full, and about a hundred eggs had been enclosed.^ 

A similar leaf nest is made by a Brazilian frog, known 
as Ihering's frog (P. Iheri/ngi), while a home of more 
elaborate construction, in which several leaves are used, is 
prepared by Savage's leaf -frog (P. Sauvagii). 

It should be noted that in these cases the care of the 
parents is confined to the providing of a nursery; when 
once this is done the young are abandoned. But many 
frogs and toads do much more than this, and one or other 
parents, most often the father, guard their offspring with 
jealous care. A Papuan frog-father, for instance, takes 
up the duties of a nurse; and when the eggs are laid, he 
sits upon them, holding the mass with both hands. And 
this vigil he keeps during the whole time while the young 
are undergoing growth, passing through the larval and 
tadpole stage. 

We must own that such a father acts with singular de- 
votion. It should be noted that seventeen eggs only are 
laid by the mother, a much smaller number than is com- 
mon among the species where neither parent affords any 
kind of guardianship. This is what we should expect. 
Nature has different ways of gaining the same end. Life 
must be carried on, that is all that matters — an incessant 
renewal, an undying fresh beginning and unfolding of life. 
But a species is maintained sometimes by the prodigality 
of productioji and sometimes by the expenditure of care and 
sacrifice on the part of the parents. And here we find 
again a lesson waiting for us to learn. For it is hardly 
necessary to point out that the same facts are true of 

1 1 quote from Mr. Pycraft's account of this incident, Infancy of 
Animals, p. 193. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG REPTILES 83 

human births; just as the family is unregulated or con- 
sidered, do we find waste and many births with parental 
neglect in the first case and restricted births with parental 
devotion in the second. There seem to be no problems of 
the family that these pre-human parents have not had to 
face and solve. 

But to return. 

"The celebrated Midwife toad {Alytes obstetricans) 
gives us a further delightful example of the father nursing 
the young. The mother-toad lays her eggs attached to one 
another by threads so that they form a long chain. The 
father-toad then twines this chaplet of his wife's eggs round 
and round his thighs. He has the strange appearance, it 
has been said, of a gentleman of the court of the time of 
James I, arrayed in puffed breeches. His devotion is very 
complete. After having encumbered himself with the com- 
ing family, he retreats to a hole in the ground. Here he 
stays with admirable patience by day, stealing forth at 
night to feed, and to bathe his egg-burdened legs in dew 
or, when possible, in water. When his period of service 
is past and the young are ready for quitting the eggs, he 
seeks the water. Here before long the young burst forth 
and swim away, whereupon the father, now free from his 
family duties, makes himself tidy (cleans himself of the re- 
mains of the eggs) and resumes his normal appearance. 

With some frogs, as, for example, in certain S. Ameri- 
can and African species, the parents take up the burden 
of caring for the young only after they have reached the 
tadpole stage. The German naturalist Brauer recently 
found in the Seychelles islands a small frog (Arthroleptis 
Seycliellensis) undertaking the guardianship of the young 
family. An adult frog (it is not stated whether it was 



84f MOTHERHOOD 

the father or the mother) was carrying nine tadpoles on 
its back, to which they were attached by a sucker on the 
belly. Unfortunately, little is known of the habits of these 
frogs. It is believed that the eggs are laid in some shallow 
pool, and that later one or other parent returns to the 
nursery to take up the care of the young tadpoles. 

A further remarkable case of care exercised by the father 
is that of Darwin's frog, the Rhinoderma darwi/ni, where 
the eggs are guarded in a great pouch under the throat, 
and opening by two slits into the mouth. During the court- 
ship this pouch is used as a voice organ to charm the fe- 
male, with sharp ringing notes like a bell. But the love- 
calls end with the birth of the family. There is now serious 
work to be accomplished. The father takes his wife's eggs 
into his pouch, which now enlarges and extends backwards 
under the belly to the groin, and upwards on each side al- 
most to the backbone. In the warm chamber thus formed, 
the tadpoles live until they become young frogs. They 
then make their way up through the doorways into their 
father's mouth, and from that living nursery they swim 
out into the wide world. 

Well, what can we say of this case.? We have heard of 
some animal fathers eating their progeny, but here the 
father's mouth is turned into the hatching nursery. Did 
I not tell you we should find very much to astonish us ? 

I could give many more examples of reptile parents 
whose family habits are more or less singular. There are 
the little-known "Coecilians,"^ the strange, snakelike am- 
phibians of S.E. Asia and Ceylon; where the mother, with 
her limbless body, yet contrives to dig a nursery for her 
eggs, which she jealously guards. I should like to write 
iPycraft gives a short account of their habits, ibid., pp. 200-206. 



PARENTHOpD AMONG REPTILES 85 

of the families of the newts and salamanders, among whom 
the young are never completely abandoned, and whose 
parental habits present many features of interest. But to 
tell their life stories with all the vivid facts would take more 
space than I can allow to this one chapter of my book; 
and to give a bald record of their habits would afford little 
interest. I must, however, recount two instances of marked 
solicitude for the family, shown in each case by a different 
parent. Take the case of a mother's care first. A captive 
mother-salamander, of the species known as Oregon pletho- 
don, was placed with her eggs in a jar. She at once took 
possession of them, forming a loop around them with her 
tail. But, displeased with this unfamiliar house, she moved 
the eggs repeatedly from place to place till at length she 
was satisfied, and all the time using her tail for the work 
of transportation as a kind of maternal arm. In the second 
case the father most faithfully guards the eggs. A giant 
salamander in the Zoological Gardens of Amsterdam kept 
watch over a clump of his wife's eggs for a period of ten 
weeks. This careful father was seen every now and then 
to crawl among the eggs and lift them up, apparently for 
the purpose of aerating them. 

From the foregoing examples it may, I think, be taken 
as established that among the reptiles there are many ex- 
emplary fathers. If the question is asked as to why in 
some species the care of the young is undertaken by the 
father and in others by the mother, I can only answer that 
I do not know. It would seem almost that at this early 
stage of life Nature was making experiments as to which 
was the better parent. I would suggest that possibly such 
a reversal of the family duties was started by chance, pos- 
sibly by the loss of the mother, or even by a specially ener- 



86 MOTHERHOOD 

getic father, and on being' found successful the arrange- 
ment was continued and became fixed as a habit. I have not 
sufficient knowledge to know if this is possible. At any 
rate, it appears to be plain that, where for any reason the 
family duties are neglected by the mother, and where the 
maintenance of the species demands protection being given 
to the young, the father steps in to take the place of the 
mother; and by his care and devotion he becomes a truly 
constituent part — a working member — of the family group. 
I would ask you to keep this fixed in your attention, as I 
shall have to refer again and again to this fact that is here 
suggested. 

What obtains among reptiles with regard to the father's 
care for the young is even more frequent among fish- 
fathers. The common stickleback of our ponds and streams 
aiFords an admirable illustration of intelligent and devoted 
fatherhood. In this species the role of the two sexes is 
completely reversed; when once the eggs are deposited by 
the mother, the whole task of guarding them is undertaken 
by the father. His labours begin with the construction of 
a nest. This is formed of bits of weed, of fibre and dirt, 
collected with much care, the whole being held together by 
a cement produced by the clever father out of a secretion 
from his kidneys. Having prepared the nursery, the 
stickleback sets out to find a wife heavy with eggs. His 
love choice apparently is decided by the capability of his 
spouse for her maternal function. By means of much per- 
suasion and passionate courtship he woos her and induces 
her to deposit her burden of eggs in his nest. 

I must wait to impress upon you the wonder of this fact. 
These love-antics lof the stickleback, which are unique 
among fishes, would seem not to be exercised for the gratifi- 



PARENTHOOD AMONG REPTILES 87 

cation of male desire, but for the purpose of inducing the 
female to lay her eggs, — to do her part in giving him off- 
spring. Vainly do I ask myself the reason of this quite 
unusual sexual altruism. This is very extraordinary. The 
father woos the reluctant mother with passionate dances 
and his glad excitement is apparently intense. At this sea- 
son the stickleback is transformed and glows with brilliant 
colours, his scales make silver look dim, his throat glows 
with flaming vermilion, he literally puts on a wedding gar-\ 
ment of love.^ And did I not fear being tedious by again 
waiting to point a moral, I should ask attention to this 
further proof given by the stickleback's love joys to the 
truth which stands out in these life histories of pre-human 
parents. I mean this : the parent — the mother or the father 
— lives in the offspring. You will see how deep is the truth 
here. The parent is, after all, only the transitory cus- 
todian of the undying gift of life. 

The conduct of the mother stickleback is in sharp con- 
trast with the devotion of the stickleback father. At once, 
having rid herself of her eggs, her desire would seem to be 
to escape any further responsibilities. She forces her way 
out of the nest by wriggling through the wall opposite 
the entrance. True, by doing this she renders a service 
to the nursery, as she thereby furnishes a channel through 
which a continuous supply of fresh, cool water can be 
driven, thus keeping the eggs bathed. This is the only- 
work the stickleback mother does for the family. The male, 
after the first laying, may persuade her to add still further 
to the deposit of eggs. Sometimes, wearied with her one 
effort, she refuses. Thus forced, the stickleback seeks a 
second wife, driven into polygamous conduct through his 

1 Problems of Sex, by J. A. Thomson and Prof. Geddes, p. 20. 



88 MOTHERHOOD 

desire for offspring. I know of no other case that is paral- 
lel with this. And the stickleback's action has often been 
misrepresented. He is instanced as a polygamist; such is 
the fate that ever awaits self-sacrifice! 

When the nest is full the father stickleback mounts guard 
over the entrance of the nursery for nearly a month, and 
he watches by day and by night, defending his precious 
charge against all comers. 

And here another curious fact must be noted: the most 
dangerous assailants to the safety of the nursery are his 
own wives ; these unnatural mothers would, if they were per- 
mitted, devour every single egg. Is it this conduct of the 
female sticklebacks that explains the devotion of the male.? 
Again I do not know. Certain it is, however, that the 
safety and care of the young is the stickleback father's con- 
stant occupation — ^the duty to which he sacrifices his life. 
From time to time he changes the position of the eggs ; he 
is a master in sanitation and keeps them constantly bathed 
with fresh water. This he does by driving a stream through 
the nest by means of a fanning motion of his breast, fins 
and tail. Through all the hatching period he works with 
unceasing care. j 

When at length the fry are born, the father's vigilance is 
even further taxed. The children, vigorous and venture- 
some, have to be watched by day and by night and pro- 
tected. Around and across and in every direction the 
father, as guardsman, continually swims. He drives off all 
comers with splendid courage. On one occasion a stickle- 
back father was watched while his nest was attacked by two 
tench and a golden carp; he seized their fins and struck 
with all his might at their heads and eyes. Truly the 
stickleback's care of his children is extraordinary. His 



PARENTHOOD AMONG REPTILES 89 

vigilant eye is everywhere. If any members of the young 
brood stray too far from the nest for safety, he immedi- 
ately swims after them, seizes them in his mouth, and brings 
them back to the safe playwater in the vicinity of the nur- 
sery. This continuous watchfulness lasts for about six 
days after the hatching.^ 

Well, what do you think now of the common view of 
the parental instinct being stronger always in the mother 
than in the father? Have we not been taking too miich 
for granted and accepting theory for truth? In the light 
of our knowledge gained from these examples of the 
father's extreme devotion, it seems impossible to refrain 
from thinking that the most intelligent and fit parent is 
the one who cares for the young. No doubt it is difficult, 
or even impossible, to decide the circumstances that have 
contributed to this strange result of the father taking the 
mother's place in the family. We do not know whether 
these acts of his sacrifice to the children's welfare imply the 
presence of the mind element — ^that is, whether they can be 
regarded as conscious as distinguished from unconscious 
adaptation, but this is altogether a separate matter and has 
nothing to do with the question we are considering. 

Fish display, according to Romanes,^ emotions of fear, 
pugnacity, social, sexual and parental feelings, anger, 
jealousy, play and curiosity. Such emotions, he states, 
correspond with those that are distinctive of the psychology 
of a child of about four months. 

In many diverse species there is clear evidence of some 
form of parental solicitude. The spotted goby, or pole- 

1 Pycraft, The Infancy of- Animals, pp. 215-216; G. J. Romanes, 
Animal Intelligence, pp. 243-245, 246-247; J. A. Thomson and Prof. 
Geddes, Problems of Sex, p. 20. 

^Animal Intelligence, p. 242. 



90 MOTHERHOOD 

wing, for instance, a fish which is found in the Thames, is 
a nest-builder. An old cockle-shell is skilfully utilised to 
form the nursery. The shell is placed with its cavity turned 
downwards, beneath it the soil is removed and then the earth- 
walls are cemented together with a secretion from the skin 
of the parents. Access to the nest is gained by a cylin- 
drical tunnel, and the whole nursery is covered and con- 
cealed by loose sand. Again it is the father who mounts 
guard over the eggs ; his vigil lasts for about nine days.-*^ 

There are many instances of nursery building under- 
taken by fish parents. Agassiz^ records a case in which an 
elaborate nest formed of knotted weeds is made by a certain 
fish, known as Chironectes. This rocking fish-cradle is 
carried by both parents and is a kind of arbour, affording 
protection and afterwards food for its living freight.^ A 
remarkable nest is built by the American bow-fin {Amia 
calva), found in the eastern states of North America. 
Both the mother and the father work together to construct 
the nursery, which is fonned by a large circular area 
cleared among the weedy shallows ; these intelligent parents 
actually- bite through the stems of all the plants that they 
cannot break or push aside. In the pool that is thus made 
the eggs are placed by the mother and fertilised by the 
father; the young develop with remarkable rapidity and 
hatch out in about eight days from time of laying. The 
family is then jealously guarded by the father, who herds 
the children — often numbering as many as a thousand in- 
dividuals* — by circling around and above them in untiring 

1 Pycraft. These cases, with those that follow, are again taken 
from The Infancy of Animals, pp. 217-219. 

2 Animal Intelligence, p. 243. 

3 Romanes refers to SilUman's American Journal, February 1872. 

4 These cases would seem to contradict the statement made on 
p. 82 that small families occur when the young are protected by 



PARENTHOOD AMONG REPTILES 91 

watchfulness. Another remarkable nest is that of the eel- 
like gymnarchus of the Nile; a huge floating nursery is 
made of grasses, measuring some two feet long and a foot 
broad. Within this nest some thousand eggs are laid, and 
as soon as they are deposited by the mother, the father 
mounts guard, defending them, and afterwards the young, 
with great ferocity. 

Some fishes' nests, like those made by the frogs, are con- 
structed of foam. M. Carbonnier gives the case of a Chi- 
nese butterfly fish in his private aquarium in Paris. The 
male fish constructed a large nest of froth, fifteen to 
eighteen centimetres horizontal diameter and ten to twelve 
centimetres high : this he did by a curious sucking and ex- 
pelling air which formed the mucus in his mouth into a 
white foam. When the nest was thus prepared the female 
was induced to enter. I do not know whether the father's 
duty was continued after this point.^ 

Even where no nest is made, the eggs and young are 
sometimes guarded by one or other of the parents, but 
generally the father. Schneider saw several fishes at the 
Naples Aquarium protecting their eggs ; in one case the 
male mounted guard over a rock where the eggs were de- 
posited, and swam with open mouth against all intruders. 
Again, the butter-fish (Pholis) of our coasts lays a mass 
of eggs, and around this future family the father coils 

the parents. I cannot explain this exception. But what I have stated 
about '.he dependence of the birth rate on the amount of parental 
care is commonly true. In this connection I would quote Mr. Py- 
craft (Infancy of Animals, p. 214): "A careful survey of the facts 
shows us that the production of large numbers of eggs and young 
produces the same result as obtained where but few eggs are laid, 
and are either carefully guarded by the parents or are specially 
protected by some other means." 
1 Quoted by St. George Mivart. 



9% MOTHERHOOD 

his body, just as does the python among the reptiles. Some 
fishes, as for instance the cat-fishes {siluridce), have the 
curious habit of carrying the eggs in their mouth. 

A further interesting case of paternal solicitude is fur- 
nished by the male fish of the common lump-sucker. The 
eggs are deposited in large clumps, and the father's first 
care is to secure their proper oxygenation. This he does 
by pressing his head into the centre of each clump, an ac- 
tion which not only prevents the eggs from being too 
closely crowded, but serves also to press the spawn firmly 
into the crevices of the rock on which it is always laid. 
As soon as this is done this fish-father mounts guard over 
his family. All would-be enemies, such as star-fish and 
crabs, who make ceaseless efforts to rob the nursery, are 
driven off^. The work of oxygenation is still carried on, 
and streams of fresh water, so necessary for the young 
lives, are driven by the careful father into the masses of 
the eggs. When the young appear new family duties await 
him, for the fry at once attach themselves to his body and 
are carried about by him.^ 

There are other instances where the young are attached 
to the body of the parent. Sometimes it is the mother who 
gives this protection, and bears her eggs attached to the 
under surface of her body. The lophobranchiate fish in- 
cubate their eggs in pouches in the same way as some 
frogs, and they show elaborate parental feelings. When 
the young are hatched out, one or other parent, usually the 
father, carefully guards them, and the pouch then serves 
as a place of shelter or retreat from danger. 

Dr. Reinhold Hensel states of a little-known Brazilian 

1 Pycraft, ibid., p. 218. The story of this excellent father and 
also several of the other cases given are taken from Yarrell, Brit. 
Fishes, 2nd edit., ii. p. 436. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG REPTILES 93 

fish (Geophagus scymnopliilus) that one of the parents — 
he does not say which — keeps careful guard over the fam- 
ily, which numbers from twenty to thirty. At a distance 
he watches his children. When alanned for their safety, 
he takes a swift swim towards them, and they, as if at his 
word of command, collect around his mouth. Suddenly, 
if the cause of alarm is not removed, the mouth is opened, 
and the whole family is engulfed. In an adult which was 
captured while thus laden, the young were seen to' be 
crowded together in the mouth with their heads towards 
the gills. Here the family is safe, and when the cause for 
alarm is passed, the youngsters are probably suddenly ex- 
pelled from their living cavern. Another extraordinary 
case is recorded by M. Carbonnier, which certainly appears 
to show anxiety on the part of fish-fathers to have off- 
spring. The males of the grotesque telescope-fish (a va- 
riety of Carassius auratus) have the curious habit of acting 
as accoucheurs to the females. On one occasion three males 
were watched pursuing one mother heavy with spawn. 
They rolled her like a ball upon the ground for a distance 
of several metres, and this process they continued, without 
rest or relaxation, for two days. Then the exhausted 
mother, who had been unable to recover her equilibrium 
for a moment, at last evacuated her eggs. 

There is perpetual variety in the actions of even the 
lowliest parents. I might add many further examples 
more or less extraordinary, of the habits of fish and rep- 
tile mothers or fathers ; but, even did the limit of my space 
permit this, it is not, I think, necessary : I have proved the 
existence low down in the scale of life of marked solicitude 
for the young, and shown that such care and sacrifice is 
shown frequently by the father. 



94. MOTHERHOOD 

Let me summarise now what we have learnt in this and 
the preceding chapter, so as to estabhsh the lessons that 
seem to me may be taken from these pre-human parents. 
The diversity in the expression of the parental instincts 
must first be grasped. There is no fixed order, nor does 
there seem to be any continuity of development in this 
matter of care for the young. We have to give up quite 
the evolutionary idea of a certain and uninterrupted prog- 
ress. Throughout our inquiry we have been met with sur- 
prises. These things baffle our attempts to find an ex- 
planation. What is it that decides and develops the strong 
instinct of parenthood? A parent in a species that is lower 
in the scale will often have more parental feeling than a 
parent in a higher species. Why, for instance, is the 
stickleback such a devoted father ; more self-sacrificing than 
an}^ other fish-father? and why is the stickleback mother 
without regard for her children? Why among the dung- 
beetles is the same parental sacrifice shown by both parents? 
Again, why is a nursery made in some cases and not in 
others? why are the young guarded sometimes by the 
mother and sometimes by the father? We may say that all 
this wide diversity in habits has arisen through adaptation ; 
the circumstances that have conditioned the life of the 
species have been different, and this has necessarily caused 
variety in their behaviour. This is, of course, true, but 
does it really teach us very much? No sooner do we begin 
to apply our reasons to any particular case of family 
behaviour than we find ourselves at a loss. Our reasoning 
suddenly breaks down, either because our knowledge is in- 
complete, or because one set of facts we possess seem to be 
contradicted by other facts of which we are equally 
sure. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG REPTILES 95 

Let us at once acknowledge our ignorance ; there is much 
that cannot be explained. 

If, however, we speculate at all on the matter, certain 
general ideas may be suggested. We are led to the view 
that when the father undertakes the care of the young, 
this reversal in the family duties must be primarily due to 
some failure on the part of the mother in performing the 
work in the nursery and home which customarily is hers. 
It is as if the father steps into her place in order that the 
species may escape the nemesis of elimination. The facts 
we have learnt are of no little importance. They tend to 
minimise, in the beginning of the family at least, the im- 
portance of the mother in relation to the young as com- 
pared with the importance of the father. It is this that I 
wish to establish. 

And what we have learnt suggests the further inter- 
dependence, that does seem to exist among all species, be- 
tween intelligence and good parenthood. Fabre, out of his 
wisdom and as a result of his great knowledge, says that 
the duties of caring for the young are the supreme inspirers 
of the intellect. Wherever we find devoted parents there 
also do we find lofty instincts. This is the second idea I 
ask you to accept. I think that we have proved its truth. 

I may not stay here to point out the immense importance 
of these suggestions to the inquiry we are making as to 
the action of the maternal instinct, nor shall I pause to 
indicate the lessons that seem to me to await us from the 
curious transformation found in so many species in the 
duties of the two sexes. These considerations must wait 
until we know more. We have, I trust, extended somewhat, 
as well as rendered more exact, our knowledge on this com- 
plex and difficult question of motherhood. In the next two 



96 MOTHERHOOD 

chapters I shall endeavour to extend it still further by a 
brief consideration of certain striking habits I have met 
with of parenthood among the birds and higher animals. 

I am well aware that there are many people who cannot 
bring themselves to believe in, or even listen without im- 
patience to, any comparison between the conduct of ani- 
mals and that which prevails among ourselves. It is ab- 
surd, they will say, to try to explain the conditions of 
human parenthood by references to animal parents. I have 
no hope of convincing, nor do I much desire to convince, 
those who thus object. I would merely advise them to leave 
out this section of my book altogether. 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER V 

PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS 
WITH FURTHER EXAMPLES OF GOOD FATHERS 

Recapitulation of facts established — Reversal of sex attributes — 
Courting females and nursing males among certain birds — At- 
tempt at explanation — Are sex-hunger and parental affection in 
conflict — A high standard of family life among birds — Few birds 
who are bad fathers — Examples of varying division of family 
work — A few birds who are bad parents — Where the mother 
takes sole charge of the eggs the father as a rule takes little 
interest in the family — The polygamous gallinaceous birds — 
Conduct affected by habits of the home — The Adelie penguins 
— Their co-operative child-rearing — The great emperor penguin — 
Scrimmage of childless mothers and fathers for possession of 
chickens. 



CHAPTER V 

PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS 
WITH FURTHER EXAMPLES OF GOOD FATHERS 

"Prais'd be the fathomless universe, 

For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious." 

Walt WHirMAN. 

Two things I have been anxious to bring out prom- 
inently in the foregoing chapters : that parental behaviour 
among the insects, reptiles and fishes presents us with a 
bewildering diversity of aspects — in particular, that the 
instinct of caring for the young is not fixed in the mother, 
but may be transferred from her to the father; and fur- 
ther, that all parental sacrifice, though often unconsciously 
expended to maintain the well-being of the family, is of 
direct benefit to the parent who bestows it, and is the surest 
means of developing and brightening such a parent's in- 
dividual intelligence. 

Now, I wish to elaborate and establish these two propo- 
sitions with further examples in order that they may be 
laid hold of and firmly grasped as indubitable facts ; and 
then w^e may come to see and understand the significance 
to ourselves of these unusually devoted fathers, which are 
found, and that not infrequently, among all classes of pre- 
human parents. 

The varied behaviour of bird-parents — more especially 
of the males — furnishes just the kind of evidence we need. 
There are several cases known, and I believe there must 

99 



100 MOTHERHOOD 

be others as yet unrecorded, wherein the conduct and, in- 
deed, the whole character of the two sexes is reversed. Here 
the females, driven it would seem by a fierce sex-hunger, 
do the courting and fight one another as rivals for the 
males, while the males undertake all the family duties of 
incubation and brooding and the feeding of the young. 

The phalaropes, both the grey and the red-necked 
species, which are found in Scotland and Ireland, afford 
a striking example of these unsexed females. Among these 
birds the role of the sexes is reversed. The duties of incu- 
bation and rearing the young are conducted entirely by the 
male, and in correlation with this habit, the female does all 
the courting. She is stronger and more pugnacious than 
the male, and is also brighter in plumage. This is really 
very remarkable. What has acted in bringing about this 
reversal in the secondary sexual characters .^^ Can the male 
nature be transferred to the female? These are difficult 
questions. In colour the phalaropes are a pale olive very 
thickly spotted and streaked with black. The male is the 
psychical mother, the female takes no notice of the nest 
after laying the eggs. Frequently at the beginning of 
the breeding season she is accompanied by more than one 
male, so that it is evident polyandry is practised.^ 

The same unusual family conditions prevail with the 
rhea and the emu, and also among the painted snipes, cas- 
sowaries, tinamous, and some of the button-quails.^ There 
are probably instances of other birds, but I do not know 
of details of their habits ; Wallace^ also mentions several 

IJ. Lewis Bonhote, British Birds, pp. 314-315. See also The 
Truth about Woman, pp. 107, 249, 265. 

2 P. Chalmers-Mitchell, Childhood of Animals, pp. 70, 109, 157. 

3 Several examples are mentioned in Darwinism, p. 281. Wallace, 
however, brings them forward in quite a different connection to 
prove his theory of the protective duller colours of the female birds. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS 101 

species in different parts of the world, among whom all 
care of the young falls entirely upon the father. In all 
these bird families exactly opposite conditions prevail to 
what we are accustomed. It should be specially noted that 
these unnatural (I use the word simply to mean unusual) 
mothers are larger and more vividly coloured than the 
hard-worked fathers ; in all such cases polyandry is prac- 
tised. 

Why is this.? 

The only attempt ai an explanation that I have been 
able to discover is given by Mr. Pycraft in his fascinating 
book, The Courtship of Animals. He says — ^ 

"The solution of this problem probably lies with the physiologist. 
We now know that the problem of sex does not rest merely in the 
complete development of the primary sexual organs; we know that 
fertile unions do not depend merely on the act of pairing, but on 
the functional activity of the ancillary glands. And it may well be 
that some change in the character of the secretions has not only af- 
fected the numerical values of the sexes, but reversed the normal 
role of coloration and behaviour." 

Mr. Pycraft does not consider that the polyandrous 
habits of these birds are due primarily to a preponderance 
of the females in the species over the males, but holds that 
this condition must rather be regarded as having arisen 
from a transference to the females, or development in them, 
of increased sexual hunger, which intensity of passion 
would tend to lead to an exhaustion of the males. This is 
exceedingly interesting. Mr. Pycraft continues — 

"Neither polygamy nor polyandry among the lower animals, at 
any rate, has been brought about or is maintained by the excessive 
death rate due to combats for the possession of mates, but must 

1 P. 136 et seq. 



102 MOTHERHOOD 

be explained as demonstrating inherent changes in the germ-plasm, 
disturbing the relative proportions of the sexes and correlated with 
a profound transformation, not only in the behaviour of the sexes 
during the period of reproductive activity, but also in their physical 
characteristics." 

If I understand this aright, the conclusion seems forced 
upon us that parental conduct is directly dependent on 
the action of the sexual appetite : that it may be modified, 
and in some cases profoundly changed, by any variation in 
this appetite's strength and expression. This is of pro- 
found interest, and such a view, if established, might ex- 
plain a great deal.^ But can it be accepted? To say that 
such changes are due to the action of the "hormones," or 
secretions of the sexual glands, does not help us very much. 
What we want to know is what induces the changes. There 
is much that cannot yet be explained. If I may venture to 
speculate on so difficult a question, it would seem that when 
the intensity of sex-hunger becomes for any reason 
stronger in the females than in the males, the result may 
be a diminishing of the instincts of motherhood. It is as 
if the egotistic desires of sex were in opposition to the 
racial duties. This would explain the female phalaropes, 
whose maternal instincts are completely atrophied. Does 
it not suggest also a possible explanation of some failures 
in human motherhood? This opens up questions that 
reach very far. I am tempted to wait to enlarge on the 
immense significance of these unnatural bird-mothers in 
the analogy their conduct bears to one of the most difficult 
cases of human motherhood — the strongly sexual woman 
who bears children but is quite unfit and without any desire 
to rear them. I shall have more to say in the later part of 

iSee p. 221, which is evidence that, perhaps, may be held to 
give some corroboration. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS 103 

my inquiry about such women, who are driven by passion 
to be mothers without having any instinct for motherhood. 

But now a return must be made to the birds' nurseries. 
It is a matter of common knowledge that birds display a 
marvellous solicitude for the welfare of the young, and 
their family life presents a beautiful and high standard of 
conduct.^ There are very few examples of birds who are 
bad fathers. Often the male rivals the female in love for 
the young; he is in constant attendance in the vicinity of 
the nest; he guards, feeds, and sings to the female, and 
often shares with her the duty of incubation. The cock 
ostrich, for example, watches by night over the hole in 
which the eggs have been buried, and the hen takes this 
duty by day. The screamer birds, again, work in shifts 
of two or three hours each. When they bred in the London 
Zoological Gardens, it was noticed that the cock-bird acted 
as timekeeper, and at the end of a watch used to come and 
push the female off the nest.^ These examples are de- 
lightful. It would seem almost that the males, when in- 
fected with paternal passion, were more ardent and regular 
in the performance of nursery duties than the mother. 

Among many birds it is usual for all family work to be 
performed quite irrespective of sex, and the parent who is 
free takes the task of feeding the one who is occupied with 
the nest.^ The male hornbill is a family despot; during 

1 An interesting account of the family qualities of birds is given 
by Espinas in Des Societes Animales, pp. 234-292. 

2 P. C. Mitchell, Childhood of Animals, pp. 157, 158. See also 
about the ostrich, The Truth about Woman, p. 94. 

3 This is done to my knowledge by the male wood-pigeon, missel- 
thrush, blue-martin, buzzard, stone curlew, curlew, dottrel, sand- 
piper, common gull, black-coated gull, kittiwake, razorbill, puflBn, 
stormy petrel, great blue heron and black vulture. There are prob- 
ably good fathers among other species whose names I have missed. 



104 MOTHERHOOD 

the breeding season he walls up his spouse within the trunk 
of a tree. He feeds her with great care, but he allows her 
no liberty. As soon as one family is reared many birds at 
once burden themselves with another. The Californian 
quail affords an example. In this species the father takes 
sole charge of the family as soon as the young birds attain 
the age of three weeks, when the mother begins the labours 
of rearing a second brood. More curious are the habits 
of the water hen, among whom the young of the first fam- 
ily assist in the work of feeding their brothers and sisters 
of the later broods.^ 

The labour of feeding the young family is a heavy task 
in which both parents commonly share. There are no cases 
of unsuitable feeding of nestlings by careless or ignorant 
parents. A regular course of nursery dietary is practised, 
in particular with nidicolous species, where the young are 
born in a helpless condition; often a special infant food 
is prepared by a process of regurgitation, or food partly 
digested and thrown up. Thus baby finches are fed on 
food made of digested insects; parent parrots also pre- 
pare a digested vegetable food ; storks break up worms and 
frogs and pieces of little fishes and mix it with partly di- 
gested matter and throw it out on the edge of the nest for 
the family meals. Young pigeons thrust their beaks into 
the mouths of their mothers to absorb the so-called pig- 
eon's-milk, which is really digested food mixed with a se- 
cretion from the crop; little cormorants thrust their bills 
right down the neck of their mother and help themselves 
to food out of her stomach. The petrels secrete oil from 
the fish they eat to feed the young : this oil is used also as a 
weapon of defence both by the parents and the nestlings, 
1 Pycraft, Infancy of Animals, p. 6^. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS 105 

who squirt it out from their mouths and nostrils at any 
unwelcome intruder on the privacy of the nest." 

When the young are fed entirely on insects the work 
entailed on the parents is enormous. A pair of blue tit- 
mice, for example, have been seen to make no less than four 
hundred and seventy -five journeys to the nest during a 
day's foraging extending over seventeen hours. Again, 
the male of the common dabchick works untiringly, and 
has been seen to take as many as forty journeys, with food, 
in the space of an hour, back to the nest, where his wife 
waits with the children, which commonly perch on her back 
and are protected by her wings. Small wonder is there that 
the labours of both parents are needed to keep the young 
families from starvation. In some cases a practical division 
of work is arranged ; and the father will bring a different 
kind of food from the mother. With the stow-chat, for 
instance, the mother brings small prey, generally spiders, 
but sometimes butterflies and moths, while the father selects 
and carries large caterpillars. Even where the young are 
precocious, fairly active at birth, and soon able to feed 
themselves, one or both parents for a considerable time 
guard, teach and protect them. Great bravery and intelli- 
gence are displayed in the face of any danger, not only 
will many parent-birds savagely attack an enemy, but in 
some cases, as, for instance, the plover or the partridge, 
the mother will feign to have a broken limb or to be lame, 
to draw off from the young the attention of the intruder. 
No parental duty is neglected. Daily lessons are frequently 
given to the nurslings on the right kind of food and the 
best way of feeding. Thus young birds of prey are in- 
structed, first in the art of breaking up their food, and later 
2 Pycraft, Infancy of Animals, pp. 77-78. 



106 MOTHERHOOD 

in the best methods of its capture. Young swallows, again, 
receive a carefully graduated course of lessons on the dif- 
ficult work of catching the insects which form their food, 
while they are flying. The parents of the woodcock carry 
their children to the feeding ground, to and from the nest, 
supporting the precious little ones with their beaks, and 
pressed close within their feet, which are used as maternal 
arms.^ 

A delightful incident was witnessed during the feeding- 
time of a red-backed shrike — ^ 

"The male had brought to the nest a young bird, and, pulling 
off its head, proceeded to ram it down the throat of a very un- 
fortunate youngster. But the morsel was too big, and had to be 
readjusted, not once, but many times; and finally it was forced 
home with such success that the wretched bird was in imminent 
danger from choking. At this the female, who had been sitting 
on the opposite side of the nest, making, apparently, very sarcastic 
comments on the awkwardness of her lord, and males in general, 
suddenly seized the offending head and, dragging it forth, proceeded 
to tear it into small pieces, giving each of the brood a piece. And 
during this time the male looked on in what appeared to be a very 
subdued fashion." 

Almost all birds take great trouble to ensure the sanita- 
tion of the nursery, and are diligent in their care of the 
health of the young. All the excrements are removed from 
the nest, a task that is rendered easy, as the droppings of 
the young are enclosed in a white, film-like envelope or cap- 
sule. A most careful search is made at the bottom of the 
nest for these capsules by the parents whenever they come 
to feed the young. Do they fail to find the expected cap- 

1 Mitchell, Childhood of Animals, pp. 160-163. Pycraft, Infancy 
of Animals, pp. 63, 68, 70, 71, 75, 76. 

2 The scene was witnessed by Miss Turner. I take my account 
from Mr. Pycraft, who quotes from Miss Turner. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS 107 

sules, one or other of the parents after the feeding will 
tap, tap on the anus of the young birds as if to remind 
them of a duty neglected.^ This is, perhaps, the most ex- 
traordinary example of parental care that I have been able 
to discover. One wonders how far this apparent recog- 
nition of the necessity of regular habits and cleanliness is 
instinctive, or how far we may grant to these parents some 
direct realisation of the dangers arising to their children 
from neglect and a dirty nursery. 

It must not, however, be thought that all birds are good 
parents. In some species there would seem to have been a 
revolt against family ties and the duty of caring for the 
young. The common cuckoo and some other cuckoos are 
well-known examples. Among them, the mother, as every 
one knows, always lays the eggs in the nest of some other 
birds, and the young cuckoo, when it is hatched, would 
seem to have some knowledge of its precarious position as 
a stranger. It creeps under the nestlings of its foster- 
parents, and, by a violent effort, raises them one by one 
on its hollow back and jerks them out of the nest, so se- 
curing undivided attention in its alien nursery. A similar 
parasitic habit, not yet so firmly established, is found 
among the cow-birds of the Argentine. Mr. W. H. Hudson 
has seen the mothers trying to build nests and failing to 
do this, as if they were struggling to regain a dying in- 
stinct. The females flutter about the mud-nests of the 
oven-birds, and whenever a chance presents itself will dart 
in and lay their eggs. Other cow^-birds make no effort at 
all in nest-building, and always lay their eggs in the occu- 
pied nests of other birds, and, as their eggs develop very 

. 1 Mr. Eliot Howard calls attention to this remarkable conduct in 
his fascinating book on the British Warblers. 



108 MOTHERHOOD 

quickly, the intruders hatch out before the true children 
of the nursery and rob them of their parents' care. 

What do we learn from this? That neglect on the part 
of the mother — any shuffling out of her duties, thereby 
placing the care of her children on the shoulders of other 
parents, leads to crime and disorder in the social organi- 
sation. 

Some birds are content with very little care for home- 
building ready for their eggs. Birds belonging to many 
different species make nurseries in hollow trees, caves, bur- 
rows or natural cavities, sometimes lining them with leaves 
and feathers to make them soft, but sometimes even ne- 
glecting this care. The New Zealand kakapo or ground 
parrot, to take one instance, hides in any hole it finds and 
lays its eggs there without any preparation; the king- 
fisher, again, digs out a hole in the ground, or occupies 
one that it finds. Emus scrape a shallow hole in the ground 
and do not cover the eggs. The cassowary scrapes to- 
gether a rude pile of leaves and mould on which she lays 
the eggs. Some of the megapodes or bush turkeys bury 
their eggs in the sand, and then take no further trouble 
about them, leaving incubation to the chance warmth of 
the sun. Others build enormous heaps of decaying leaves, 
forming a hot-bed from natural fermentation, by which 
the chicks are hatched out with no trouble to the parents. 
The young of the megapodes are the only living birds that 
are hatched out able to ily at once and ready to take care 
of themselves. It would appear that neglectful parents 
foster self -development in the children.^ 

Where the mother broods alone over the eggs it some- 
times happens that the father-bird takes no interest in the 
1 Mitchell, Childhood of Animals, pp. 149-150, 159. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS 109 

family. The polygamous gallinaceous birds appear to be 
without, or to have lost, the paternal instinct. Peacocks, 
pheasants, turkey-cocks, and barn-door cocks do practically 
nothing for their families, and while the mother-birds' care 
in feeding and guarding the young is untiring, the fathers 
are running after amorous adventures. The conduct of 
the male turkey is even worse, for, prompted by jealousy, 
he will often attempt to devour the eggs, and the young 
are protected from his attacks only by the mothers unit- 
ing together in troops. Here we see the exact opposite 
conduct in the two sexes from that in such a family as the 
sticklebacks, where good fathers replace bad mothers. But 
the same result follows. In either case the neglect of par- 
ental duty by one or other parent is a source of weakness 
to the family and increases the risks to which the young 
are exposed.^ 

I must insist on how strongly conduct is affected by the 
conditions of the home ; and any change of habits will di- 
rectly modify parental behaviour. Thus an animal habitu- 
ally domestic may easily change under the pressure of ex- 
teraal causes. Thus wild ducks, though good parents and 
strictly monogamous, and very highly developed in social 
qualities when in the wild state, become indifferent to their 
offspring and loosely polygamous under domestication.^ 
Civilisation, in this case, depraves the birds as often it 
does men. But the examples of bad Darents among birds 
are few in number. 

I will end this chapter by relating, with as much detail 

1 For a much fuller account of these bad fathers among birds see 
The Truth about Woman, pp. 90, 104-111, where explanation is at- 
tempted. See also The Position of Woman in Primitive Society 
(American title, The Age of Mother-Power) , p. 63. 

2 J. G. Millais, Natural History of British Ducks, p. 8. 



110 MOTHERHOOD 

as is possible, the curious family history of the Adelie 
penguins;^ as these birds have developed some interesting 
and startling experiments in nursery care and parenthood. 
The penguins live in large social colonies. It should be 
noted first that the death rate among the young birds is 
enormously high, as happens invariably where the single 
family is replaced by great breeding colonies. 

Yet the penguins are self-sacrificing parents. Year by 
year in the month of October they return to the same breed- 
ing-ground, having travelled many hundreds of difficult 
miles, and urged by a mysterious nostalgia that their 
children may be born in the same home. The first duty is 
to take possession of one of the old stone nests, or to scoop 
out a new hollow in the ground. Here the hens sit by the 
future home, and wait for proposals from the cocks. The 
advance is made by what appears to be a symbolic action 
and the cock places a stone at the hen's feet. But often 
the hen answers never a word. Bloody duels are fought 
between rival suitors to arouse her passion and prove the 
vigour of her mate. 

Both birds work at the home-making, repairing an old 
nest or forming a new one, which is made of rounded stones. 
The cock collects these, and it is interesting to note what 
would seem to be an aesthetic taste in these bird-builders ; 
certain painted pebbles, provided by the explorers for the 
use of the birds, were in great demand, the colour red 
being preferred to green. 



1 The habits of the penguins were first noted by the late Dr. Ed. 
A. Wilson, the distinguished naturalist of the Discovery Expedition, 
and on his death his work was ably carried on by the Staff Surgeon, 
Murray Levick. He has come nearer to the life of the penguin 
than any other discoverer. See Natural History of the Adelie Pen- 
guins. Also article in The New Statesman, April 17, 1915. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG BIRDS 111 

During the first days of wedded life the conflicts be- 
tween the cocks continue, and the chosen cock maintains 
his rights by driving off all interlopers ; but later, when 
the pair settle down to the serious duties of the family, they 
live in peace and are perfectly faithful to each other. Not 
until the eggs have been laid does either parent go to feed ; 
the shortest period of total abstinence from food being 
about eighteen days and the longest about twenty-eight 
days — a fine example of parental sacrifice. Then one' of 
the birds marches off to the water for a holiday, which may 
last from seven to ten days, after which it comes back to 
give the other bird its turn. When the young penguins are 
hatched the parents share in the work of feeding and 
guarding them, and relieve each other at frequent intervals. 
The bird who goes to feed always returns heavily burdened 
with provisions, and its alwa^^s quaint shape becomes gro- 
tesque, when so laden with crustaceans that it has to lean 
backwards to keep its balance. Sometimes a bird will try 
to carry too much, with the result that it tumbles over and 
loses the entire load. The young chicks feed in the same 
way as the young cormorants, by thrusting their heads into 
the parent's gullet. 

Though both birds work together and with the same 
zeal, it must be noted that the mother's guard over the 
young is more strict than is that of the father. When the 
mother is sitting, nothing, not even a wrangle with her 
next-door neighbour, will induce her to move from her post. 
Whatever happens, there she stays until her turn for re- 
laxation comes. But the cocks are more easily led astray. 
Their combativeness ca-uses them to forget family affairs. 
Often much harm is done by these quarrels in the crowded 
rookery, which occur frequently and in spite of the pro- 



112 MOTHERHOOD 

tests of anxious neiglibonring parents, who are seen trying 
to make peace. 

The most curious habit of these delightful birds has still 
to be recorded. They have developed a taste for games, 
such as leaping, diving and boarding the ice-floes. These 
amusements are indulged in by the adults, who band them- 
selves in large companies, and play occupies much of their 
time. To gain the necessary freedom for this fun from 
their homes, and without leaving the chicks to perish, a 
most instructive device has been evolved by the penguin 
parents. The birds with young families "pool their off- 
spring" in groups, which are left in charge of a few con- 
scientious birds, both cocks and hens, who act as nurses ; 
they ward off the^ attacks of the sukas, and keep, or try to 
keep, the chicks from wandering. The 'holidaying parents 
bring food at intervals — when their consciences smite them 
— and they remain faithful to their own creches. 

This is, I think, the earliest example of what must be 
regarded as a premeditated experiment in co-operative 
child-rearing. For the parents it doubtless has many ad- 
vantages. These remarkable birds certainly appear to find 
a quite unusual joy in life: we read of the ecstatic atti- 
tudes they will frequently assume and the weird "chant de 
satisfaction" which they utter during play when all is well 
with their world. Yet the fact, already noted, must not be 
overlooked that the death rate in the rookery is enor- 
mously high ; indeed, a frightful mortality often overtakes 
the young chicks when left by their parents. The children 
pay for the escape on the part of the parents from the 
sacrifice parenthood must entail. 

I have a further case to record of a different experi- 
ment in co-operative parenthood, in this case necessitated 



PARENTJIOOD AMONG BIRDS 113 

through the severities of the struggle of Hfe. In the same 
antarctic regions where the Adehe penguins make their 
home there dwells another penguin, the great emperor pen- 
guin. This bird has a sad history ; never, during the whole 
course of its life, does it touch dry land; the vast ice- 
fields form its only home, and it has to brave the perils of 
the open water in its search for food. Under such cir- 
cumstances the struggle for life is severe, and the parent- 
birds have the greatest difficulty to rear the young. ' In 
these ice-nurseries, incubation in the usual manner in a 
nest is impossible ; a new and curious method is adopted. 
Each mother lays but a single egg, which is placed for 
warmth and safety in a "brood^spot" situated at the back 
of the feet, where it is covered by the overlapping feathers 
of the abdomen. Even this care is not rewarded always, 
and many of the eggs perish. 

Owing to the difficult incubation, a large percentage of 
brooding birds are left without eggs and young. And the 
curious thing is that this loss seems to increase the desire 
for offspring, until the parental instinct becomes a tor- 
menting passion. This is what happens. Each childless 
bird strives to adopt a child from the more fortunate 
parents ; and this leads to a competition in parenthood, 
which of its kind is without parallel. 

Not only the duty of incubation, but afterwards caring 
for the young chicks, is carried out not by one bird only, 
but by a dozen or more, which stand patiently round for a 
chance to seize either a chicken or an egg* Nor is it, as 
might be expected, the mothers alone who are^seized by the 
passion of thwarted maternity ; the fathers help their child- 
less wives in their efforts to steal offspring. Every bird, 
male as well as female, has developed the "brood-spot," and 



114 MOTHERHOOD 

has the same bare patch of skin at the lower part of the 
abdomen against which the egg, when possessed, is pressed 
for warmth. 

"What we actually saw, again and again," states Dr. Wilson, 
"was the wild dash made by a dozen adults, each weighing any- 
thing up to ninety pounds, to take possession of any chicken that 
happened to find itself deserted on the ice. It can be compared to 
nothing better than a football scrimmage, in which the first bird to 
seize the chicken is hustled and worried on all sides by the others 
while it rapidly tries to push the infant between its legs with the 
help of its pointed beak, shrugging up the loose skin of the abdomen 
the while to cover it. . . . The chicks are fully alive to the incon- 
venience of being fought for by so many clumsy nurses, and I have 
seen them not only make the best use of their legs in avoiding so 
much attention, but remain to starve and freeze in preference to 
being nursed. Undoubtedly, I think that of the 77 per cent, that 
die before they shed their down, quite half are killed by kindness." 

It is from such an example as this that we may come to 
realise the extraordinary power of parent-hunger. Con- 
sider these penguin mothers and fathers clamouring and 
fighting for the possession of a child. With them the par- 
ental instinct has gained fierce strength from being 
thwarted. Is there not here yet another lesson for us to 
learn? 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VI 

PARENTHOOD AMONG THE HIGHER ANIMALS 
THE FIXING OF THE PARENTAL INSTINCT IN THE MOTHER 

Retrogression in fatherhood — Among mammals no examples of de- 
voted fathers — Egoistic desires increase in the males and interest 
in the family decreases — Probable reason — Method of birth and 
circumstances of life of infant mammals force mothers to monop- 
olise nutrition and care of young — Parenthood more automatic 
— The father pushed out of his earlier position of service to the 
family — Instead of a working partner with the mother he be- 
comes a member apart — His character appears to change — He 
becomes masterful, pugnacious and jealous — This general among 
mammals — Number of young among mammals usually reduced — 
Varie^i forms of sexual association practised by different species 
— Polygamy frequent — The matriarchal family — The clue we are 
seeking — The egoism of the males acts for the advantage of the 
females — The maternal instinct fixed in the mothers — Self-sacri- 
fice becomes once and for ever the supreme joy and privilege of 
the female — Objections that may be raised — Resume — General 
conclusions to be drawn from pre-human parenthood. 



CHAPTER VI 

PARENTHOOD AMONG THE HIGHER ANIMAI.S 
THE FIXING OF THE PARENTAL INSTINCT IN THE MOTHER 

"The universe throbs with restless change. Everything that we 
know is becoming rather than being." — P. Chalmers Mitchell. ' 

One of the difficulties that has met me in my studies 
of the family among the animals is that, as we ascend the 
scale of life, there is a moral retrogression in fatherhood — 
at least, that is how it appears to me. There are, as far 
as I have found, no examples among mammals, the highest 
and last group of the animal kingdom, of devoted fathers 
undertaking the sole charge of the young, and few where 
the father even shares with the mother to any extent in 
the work connected with the upbringing of the family. 
The egoistic desires seem to increase in the males, with a 
corresponding weakening of their interest in the family 
and willingness to participate in its duties. The young 
are carried by the mother alone, they are protected chiefly 
by her ; the father takes no part in the nursery cares, and 
rarely does he help in providing food for the children. 
The family is maternal, the female — the mother — its 
centre ; the male is bound sexually to the female, but apart 
from this his connection with the family is slight ; we find 
him most frequently following personal interests. 

In contrast with the conduct of the fathers in the fam- 
ilies we have so far examined among the birds, reptiles, 
fishes and insects, with whom the father's solicitude and 

117 



118 MOTHERHOOD 

sacrifice for the young equals and, in some cases, rivals that 
of the mother, this complete paternal indifference is really 
very startling. It demands our attention. 

What factors have brought about this reversal, which 
at first sight appears so strange.? Why is it that the 
parental instinct diminishes in the father and is now fixed 
in the mother.? It is, however, easy to understand this 
change if we consider what now happens, and the changed 
conditions under which the young are born. The mam- 
mals do not lay eggs like bird and reptile mothers, but 
each mother retains the eggs within her body, and so 
secures for the young warmth and protection far more 
certainly than would be possible in the best-contrived nest 
or home.^ But this has led to changed habits. No nest or 
brooding-home has to be made, and the same preparations 
for the family, which hitherto have united in work the 
father with the mother, are unnecessary. Again, food has 
not now to the same extent to be collected and stored in 
readiness for the future needs of the children. The em- 
bryo, living within the body of its mother, gains the food 
for its growth directly from her blood. The connection 
between mother and child now is closer; her condition and 
health become of direct importance for the welfare of the 
young. At the same time the importance of the father is 
sharply lessened. This is plain. The early stages of 
mother-care, instead of being conscious and external acts 
regulated by special circumstances and often modified to 
meet different needs, now become part of the unconscious 
functions of the body of the mother — the child is an ex- 
tension of herself. The advantage to the offspring of this 

iThe lowliest living mammals, the duck-billed mole and the ant- 
eater of Australia, still lay eggs, which they retain within their 
bodies until nearly ready to hatch. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG HIGHER ANIMALS 119 

change from external to internal protection is great, in 
the added safety thereby gained from fixed functions over 
the habits that might be slurred over, bungled or forgotten. 
I think, however, that there is a corresponding loss — that 
parenthood becomes more possibly irresponsible and, at the 
same time, individualism becomes stronger. Birth, with 
narrowed opportunity for intelligent adaptation, is more 
of an unconsidered incident ; I mean that before it occurs 
it demands much less from the parents in sacrifice and in 
work. This is certainly the case with the father, whose 
part in gaining offspring is reduced to a single momentary 
act, and one, moreover, that is prompted by the fiercest 
egoistic desire. 

But I think, too, there is a deterioration, though much 
less in degree, in the quality of motherhood. The prepa- 
ration made for the birth of her children by the mam- 
mal mother is very slight, indeed, in many cases the mother 
appears to be unaware of the approaching event until 
the actual birth begins. Here is an account of a langur 
monkey, whose first baby was born in the London Zoologi- 
cal Gardens, at which event the mother seemed to be ut- 
terly surprised. The birth took place at night, and the 
mother, from the marks in the cage, must have dragged 
up and down the new, astonishing object. But by the 
morning she had grown accustomed to the baby, and held 
it pressed closely to her breast, from time to time thrusting 
the head outwards and eagerly looking at it. For sev- 
eral weeks the baby never left her, and she showed endless 
curiosity and pleasure in it, ceaselessly examining it, turn- 
ing it over, stroking it .and keeping it clean with her hands. 
She was jealous of visitors, and when they came near to 
the cage she would turn round so as to hide the baby from 



120 MOTHERHOOD 

them. The father, in case of accidents, had been taken 
away and put in the adjoining cage, which was shut off by 
a piece of canvas. He made a hole in this, and from time 
to time, especially when the mother or baby made an}* 
noise, he would raise the torn flap and peep through.-^ 

It must be remembered that among the mammals it is the 
rule for the young to be suckled by the mother, a mode 
of feeding alreadj^ foreshadowed by many bird parents 
and some insects. But with them the special nursery food 
is prepared from their own food by incessant work, under- 
taken, as a rule, by both parents. The act of suckling, on 
the other hand, occurs without conscious work, and is a 
function in which the father has no concern whatever. 

I have no facts to trace the steps whereby this function 
of maternal feeding was developed and established, but I 
would suggest that, apart from the advantage to the young 
of a special diet, the immense labour entailed on the parents 
in obtaining food — the foraging over wide areas and the 
carrying of the provisions back to the nursery — made it a 
question of economy ; and that the mother, as more usually 
being with the young, was the parent who came without 
conscious eifort to prepare for them in her body this early 
nourishment. 

It is plain that the bond between the mother and off- 
spring would be greatly strengthened; they would be de- 
pendent upon her alone, and drawing life from her body, 
she would become increasingly conscious of them during 
a much longer period. The emotional quality of affec- 
tion really develops now. The suckling is a continuation 

iThis case is recorded by Mr. Chalmers Mitchell in The Child- 
hood of Animals, the fascinating book from which I have gained so 
much assistance. 



PARENTHOOD A^IONG HIGHER ANIMALS 121 

of the organic relation by which the child is born of the 
mother's body ; now the child exists through her, and be- 
comes, so to speak, a habit which grows up out of her own 
individuality. I lay stress upon this fact: the maternal 
feeding is the beginning of a new period in the growth 
of motherhood, and is the foundation of the indestructible 
bond between mother and child. 

We see, then, the reasons for the curious and sudden 
deterioration in fatherhood ; the father has, as it were, been 
pushed out of his earlier position of service. Now that 
there is no nursery to be built, and the mother is the sole 
feeder of the young during their period of greatest help- 
lessness, the father loses his interest in the family. Our 
interests and our habits are fixed by whatever occupies our 
attention. Freed from the first and most important care 
of the young, the male is severed from the family and its 
duties, and his attention, thus set free, turns in new di- 
rections and centres upon himself. In this connection we 
have, I would suggest, an explanation of the greater varia- 
bility of the male as well as of his more violent passions. 
Instead of a working partner with the mother, sharing in 
her sacrifice for the welfare of the family, he is a member 
apart; he grows larger than the female, becomes master- 
ful, pugnacious, jealous of her and of the young: a fight- 
ing, egoistic specialisation. He is still attached to the 
female, but he seeks her to satisfy his sexual needs, he less 
frequently remains with her as a domestic partner, reliev- 
ing her in connection with the rearing of the 
young.i 

1 See The Truth about Woman, pp. 102-114, also The Position of 
Woman in Primitive Society, the theme of which book follows and 
develops this theory. 



122 MOTHERHOOD 

This is the general condition among the mammals. It 
is the rule that the young are tended by the mother dur- 
ing the period of their youth. At birth they are usually 
helpless, and often are bom before the eyelids have opened 
and while the body is yet naked, or but scantily clothed. 
But there are degrees of helplessness, determined, it would 
seem, by the conditions of the environment and habits of 
the parents. The maternal care is greater or less in ac- 
cordance with the needs of the young. The period of 
youth is much longer, and increases as we ascend in the 
scale of life. The great apes, for instance — the gorilla, 
the orang and the chimpanzee — take from eight to twelve 
years to grow up, while baboons and common monkeys take 
from three to eight years, and the little South American 
monkeys and lemurs two to three years.-'^ In connection 
with this longer childhood we find an increased mental 
growth ; the years of youth are the time in which the brain 
cells increase in size and co-ordinate with the rest of the 
body. And the longer the period of youth the more per- 
fect is the brain. Thus the helplessness of the young 
stands in direct relation to the Increased vitality shown by 
the adults. It is also the strongest factor in developing 
and fixing the maternal instincts. 

The young do not leave their mother until they are well 
ready to start life on their own account; then they are 
thrown into the world. Till then they are cared for. 
Freed of any duty of finding food, and very seldom having 
to defend themselves, they have time to experiment and 
learn from experience. The instincts in this way become 
educated, their rigidity is destroyed, and more and more 
they are controlled by memory and experience — the stored- 
1 Mitchell, Childhood of Animals, p. 225, 



PARENTHOOD AMONG HIGHER ANIMALS 123 

up results of experiment. The purpose of youth is to give 
time for this. 

The number of the ^^oung is now very greatly reduced, 
and the small families are protected by the mothers, in 
some cases assisted by the fathers. The maintenance of 
the species by the production of enormous families has 
ceased. Some of the small rodents, it is true, breed several 
times in the course of the year, and there are other fecund 
mammals, such as pigs, which give birth to many youhg 
in one litter. But these are rare exceptions. The usual 
number of young is two or three at a birth, and the higher 
in the scale of mammalian life the smaller is the family."*" 

There is a fact that must be noted here. A curious per- 
verted instinct is not uncommon among mammal mothers, 
though rare with the monkeys. In the first day or two 
after birth a mother will kill and eat her young. I had 
a bitch who once did this: the first time she had a family 
she ate all her puppies in the first night ; aftenvards (I 
mean when for a second time she had puppies) she was a 
good and fond mother. I think this habit of maternal 
infanticide must be connected with that change, of which I 
have spoken, whereby the early stages of brood-care are 
carried on without the direct consciousness of the mother. 
The children do not enter into her experience because she 
has not had to work for them. She eats them as she would 
eat any other helpless thing. In a carnivorous mother 
especially this habit is not surprising; it happens almost 
always with young and inexperienced mothers. And I 
think it shows that maternal care is not so instinctive as we 
are led to believe, but is the result of, and directly dependent 
upon habit and the attention being fixed on the family. 
1 Mitchell, Childhood of Animals, pp. 164, 166, 225. 



124 MOTHERHOOD 

In all the carnivores the young are born helpless, usually 
blind, though new-born lions can see; they remain with 
their mother for a period varying from a few weeks with 
the smaller creatures to even more than a year. Sometimes 
the father stays loosely attached to the family. The large 
predaceous creatures cover great distances in search of 
prey. There is, however, a stationary home lair in a well- 
concealed place, to which the mother always returns with 
food. She takes scrupulous care to keep the nursery clean, 
and she carefully looks to the needs of her young family, 
licking them with her tongue, until they are old enough to 
perform their own toilet or lick and clean each other. Be- 
fore they are weaned they are allowed to scrape off frag- 
ments of flesh from the mother's food, so that they may 
become accustomed to their future food. At the same time 
they are taught the elements of stalking, in play-lessons 
with the mother's tail and paws. Later they are taken 
out by the mother, sometimes by both parents, on foraging 
expeditions. Family parties of lions, for instance, often 
have been seen by African hunters. 

The fathers do little for the young families. Sometimes 
they afford protection in fighting and driving off enemies ; 
it is important, however, to note that this service to the 
family seems to be prompted by jealousy and aggression, 
and must be considered as an expression of the egoistic in- 
stincts rather than connected with parental solicitude. 

Among the mammals polygamy is frequent, and there 
are cases of the most brutal promiscuity, where the males 
and females unite and separate at chance meetings, without 
any care for the family arising in the mind of the male. 
Polygamous unions are especially common among species 
with sociable habits who live in hordes. Sociability prob- 



PARENTHOOD i^VIONG HIGHER ANIMALS 125 

ably arises through individual weakness. Animals that are 
badly armed for fierce combats, and that have, besides, 
difficulty in obtaining food are glad to live in association. 
Thus the ruminants live in hordes or polygamous groups, 
composed of females and young subject to a male who 
protects them, expelling his rivals, and being a veritable 
chief of a band.^ 

The conditions of the nursery and early life of the young 
are changed necessarily by these different habits. In the 
first place, the ruminants are wanderers, and travel long 
distances in search of food and water. Thus there is no 
permanent home and no nursery, and the mothers make no 
preparation beforehand for the young. They retire for a 
few minutes to a thicket, where they drop the calves or 
Iambs. Families are small, and one is the usual number 
at a birth. The young are not born helpless, as is the case 
among the young carnivores where there is a settled nur- 
sery, but are clothed, have their eyes open, and their senses 
are very alert. In a very short time, almost as soon as their 
mother has licked them clean, they are ready to follow her ; 
and they join the herd, if the animals are gregarious. 
The mothers show marked affection to the j^oung, but it 
would seem to be the business of the young one rather to 
follow and stick to the mother than for the mother, as 
amongst the carnivores, to take the lead in the affections. 
There is no real training of the young by the mother. 
Sometimes, if there is a herd, the males will combine to 
defend the group of the females and their young ; but more 
frequently there is a family party, consisting of one or 
possibly two males, with- their several wives and children.^ 

iLetourneau, The Evolution of Marriage, p. 32. 
2 Mitchell, Childhood of Animals, pp. 170-171. 



126 MOTHERHOOD 

Many different animals live in this manner in familial 
groups. The moufflons of Europe and of the Atlas, for 
instance, form polygamous social groups in the breeding 
season."^ Among the walrus, the male, who is of a very 
jealous temperament, collects around him from thirty to 
forty females, making altogether a polygamous family 
sometimes amounting to a hundred and twenty individuals.^ 
Again, the male of the Asiatic antelope is inordinately 
polygamous ; he expels all his rivals, and forms a harem 
numbering sometimes a hundred females. It should be 
noted that polygamic regime does not appear to lessen the 
affectionate sentiment in the females towards their ty- 
rant lord. There are many examples of the most oppressed 
females being faithful wives. And so much is this so that 
the conclusion is almost forced upon us that the female 
animal likes servitude.^ 

There is a wide range in the form of sexual associa- 
tion practised by different species. The carnivorous 
animals, as a rule, live in couples ; this is done, for example, 
by bears, weasels and whales. But this is not an absolute 
rule, for the South African lion is a polygamist, and is 
usually accompanied by four or five females.* Sometimes 
species that are very nearly allied have different conjugal 
customs ; thus the white-cheeked peccary lives in social 
groups, while the white-ringed peccary lives in couples.^ 

Permanent unions are formed, especially among the 

lEspinas, Soc. Animales, pp. 120 et seq. The reader should con- 
sult this work on the three stages of domestic societies: "the society- 
conjugal, the society maternal, and the society paternal." 

2 Letourneau, Evolution of Marriage, p. 327. 

3 In this connection see The Truth about Woman pp. 110-111. 

4 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 443. 

" Espinas, Soc. Animales. See the introductory and concluding 
chapters of this admirable book. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG HIGHER ANIMALS 127 

anthropoid apes. Thus strictly monogamous marriages 
are frequent among gorillas and orang-utans, and any 
approach to loose behaviour on the part of the wife is 
severely punished by the husband.^ The ouanderoo 
(^Macaque silenus) of India has only one female, and is 
faithful to her till death.^ 

But polygamy is frequent. Savage tells us that the 
Gorilla guia, for instance, fonns small hordes, consisting 
of a single adult male, who is the despotic master of many 
females and a certain number of the young. We find both 
the matrichate and the patrichate family ; but whatever the 
form of sexual relationship practised, the father has 
always much less affection for the young than the mother. 
Among the mammals this is universal. 

The females among the mammals being smaller and less 
powerful than the males, no sexual association comparable 
to polyandry is possible. Yet in justice it must be noted 
that the desire for sexual variety is not always confined to 
the males. A female will sometimes take advantage of the 
moment when the attention of her lord and master is 
entirely absorbed by the anxiety of a fight to run off with 
a young male. Even among species noted for their con- 
jugal fidelity this will happen. The male animal has no 
monopoly in sexual sins.^ 

The polygamous famihes of monkeys are always sub- 
ject to patriarchal rule. The father is the tyrant of the 
band — an egoist, who spends his time in fighting and in 
love adventures. Any protection he gives to his wives is 

1 Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex, vol. vi. p. 422. 

2 J. C. Houtzeau, FacultSs mentales des animaux, vol. ii. p. 394. 
This work should be consulted, in particular, for the comparison 
it gives of the mental faculties of the animals with those of man. 

3 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 399. 



128 MOTHERHOOD 

in his own interest and to keep them bound to himself. He 
neither makes the home nor feeds the young. Often he 
is a disturber of the family peace. He will, on occasion, 
show jealousy of his own sons, whom he expels from the 
band as soon as they are old enough to give him trouble ; 
his daughters, in some cases, he adds to his harem. 

Even in monogamous species, where the male keeps with 
the female, he does so more as chief than as father. He 
takes little interest in the nursery. At times he is much 
inclined to commit infanticide and to destroy the offspring 
which, by absorbing the attention of his partner, thwart 
his amours. Thus among the large felines the mother 
often is obliged to hide her young ones from the male when 
he stays with her, in order to prevent his devouring 
them.^ 

Again, among the even-toed ungulates (pigs, peccaries 
and hippopotami) we find marked maternal affection and 
care. Little pigs are feeble at birth, and are sedulously 
guarded by their mother. A hippopotamus baby (the 
family usually consists of one only) stays with its mother 
for a long time, probably several years, and when the 
mother goes to and fro to the water to feed, the little one 
rides on her back. The fathers take no notice at all of 
the young. The odd-toed ungulates (horses, asses and 
zebras, and the tapirs and rhinoceroses) live in herds. The 
young are active soon after birth and able to follow their 
mothers, who have great affection for them. The males 
will protect the females and young when the herd is 
attacked if a fight is unavoidable, but they prefer to seek 



ILetourneau, Evolution of Marriage, p. 33. See also The Truth 
about Woman, p. 109 and The Position of Woman in Primitive 
Society. 



PARENTHOOD AJMONG HIGHER ANIMALS 129 

safety in flight. The fathers do not appear to have any 
affection for the young.-^ 

Among the numerous classes ol rodents, where the 
young are born naked, bhnd and helpless, the whole duty 
of their upbringing is undertaken by the mother. " I 
do not know of any instance," states Mr. P. Chalmers 
Mitchell, " in which the male takes care of the young ; 
generally they either neglect them altogether, or attack 
them and persecute them." 

From such pictures as these the position of the father 
in the family will readily be seen. No longer bound by 
domestic ties to the young, he knows no duty to the family 
except the rule of jealous ownership. How complete is 
the change in the family organisation. How sharp is the 
contrast between these indifferent males, jealous and fight- 
ing, and the devoted fathers among the birds, fishes, rep- 
tiles and insects, uniting with the mothers as working 
partners in the home-making, food-providing, and all the 
care of the young. The father is now alone — separated 
from the family, banded with other males. And do you 
not see how this change, and the indifference of the males 
to any interests but their own, have forced the mothers 
into closer union with the family? The male strength, 
the gorgeous display of sex-charms, the fierce fighting for 
prey and for love, are now markedly developed. But this 
polygamous jealousy and egoism acts really for the 
advantage of the females. It is the egoistic male conduct 
that forces altruism upon them. I attach great importance 
to this. I maintain that the forcing out of the father 
from his service and earlier important position of a worker 
in the circle of the family served as a means to the end of 

I Mitchell, Childhood of Animals, p. 171 et seq.; p. 176. 



130 MOTHERHOOD 

deepening and fixing the maternal instinct in the mothers. 
What was lost for fatherhood was gained for motherhood. 
Self-sacrifice became once and for ever the supreme joy 
and privilege of the female. 

We have found the clue we were seeking. 



Further than this I must not go. The first part of my 
inquiry has come to an end. There is little more that I 
need to say. It may seem to the reader that the animal 
family, in a book written to establish the duties and rights 
of human motherhood, has received too much attention. 
To those who hold this view I can say only that I do not 
agree with them. In forethought and sacrifice for the 
well-being of the young — the devotion of the father as well 
as of the mother — these pre-human parents do not yield 
precedence to ma.ny human families. They deserve our 
attentive study. But I have no hope, nor much desire, to 
convince those of an opposite opinion, who hold that we 
are so much higher and different from the animals that 
we can learn nothing from them. To all such I would 
recommend again that they leave this section of my book 
unread. 

There is, however, another objection that may be raised. 
It may be thought that too much stress has been laid on 
the father and his connection with the family, that my 
choice of illustrations has been biased, and cases taken in 
which the father's devotion is unusually prominent. This 
I have done. And I have done it of fixed purpose. In the 
first place, I desired to prove the error in the common 
opinion that the parental instinct has at all times been the 
endowment of the female, stronger in her than in the male. 



PARENTHOOD AMONG HIGHER ANIMALS 131 

I wanted it to be known that in the beginning of the family 
the father was as true a parent as the mother, his devotion 
sometimes being greater than hers. Then, secondly, I 
hoped, by means of the insight that the many and great 
changes in the past conditions of the family afford us, to 
establish the close connection which does at all times exist 
between parental devotion and the duties performed in 
feeding and caring for the young. The parent who sacri- 
fices most is the parent who loves most. Some of the siig- 
gestiens I have made may be more or less open to question, 
but not a few, I think, are true in the light of the facts that 
cannot be questioned. I am fully aware of the omissions 
and inadequacy of my summary; probably I have made 
mistakes. I think this could not have been prevented. 
Much ground had to be covered. The illustrations I have 
been able to give of each stage in the history of parent- 
hood are few, compared with the rich number that might 
be studied. I have made no attempt at completeness, nor 
have I tried to set up any exact order of behaviour. Life 
is too full of surprises for such arbitrary theories. I 
have, however, tried to make clear certain ideas that have 
forced themselves very strongly upon my attention during 
my own studies. 

We have seen the maternal instinct in the making, and 
we have come to understand the strong force of this 
impulse, which finds its expression in so many diverse ways. 
There is much that we cannot understand. But this is 
largely because we know so little. We have, I hope, gained 
a clearer view ; we have learnt many things that may cast 
forward suggestions for the solving of our own sexual, 
domestic and social relationships. The facts which I 
have recorded are, I trust, sufficient for this purpose: I 



132 MOTHERHOOD 

hold that the following general conclusions may be drawn 
from them — 

Regarding the care of the young as the moving force 
in developing the intelligence of the parents, I have ac- 
cepted the truth, which it is the chief purpose of my book 
to make plain, that the individual exists for the race. 
Other personal things may be important, they may be pro- 
foundly important, but they are not primary — not one 
with the forces that do not change. The individual is 
primarily the host and servant of the seed of life. Birth 
is the essential fact underlying all experience. 

From this service to the future arises the family and the 
home. And with the appearance of the family, new habits 
are necessarily formed, and these act in developing the 
higher sides of mental and emotional life. Co-operation, 
friendship and love which is not sexual attraction find 
their first beginnings in the limiting by the parents of their 
desire to look after themselves, to satisfy their own appe- 
tites and provide for their own needs. The mere toleration 
of the young is the start in a new life. There follows a 
mutual joining in work with the necessity and opportunity 
of modifying instinct by practice. In this way a direct 
push forward is given for the development of intelligent 
conduct. An immense advance, then, is gained from the 
association of the young with the old in the family tie. 

In the cases we have examined, we have seen that the 
same end is not gained always in the same way. Nature 
has no fixed rule for the family. The contrasts and para- 
doxes of animal family life are numerous. We have 
watched the development of the parental intelligence in 
many family groups; we have seen that there is no fixed 



PARENTHOOD AJNIONG HIGHER ANIMALS 133 

order in the relations which exist between parents and off- 
spring. All arrangements are good on the one condition 
that they succeed in serving the family and preserving 
its life. 

To produce large families, making little provision for 
them, is a wasteful and improvident way of maintaining 
life. This spendthrift fashion of reproduction was the 
early method. To limit the number of the family and to 
cherish and protect the young, not throwing them upon 
the world until they are well fitted to make a brave fight 
against its dangers, is the later, wiser and safer way. We 
have noted devices of this kind in each group of the animal 
kingdom, but parental care becomes more and more com- 
plete as the scale of life is ascended. Not only are the 
numbers in the family reduced, but the period of youth 
becomes longer. The protected young are permitted a 
longer time in which they have the opportunity of learn- 
ing to live. 

The importance of the form of union or marriage 
between the parents and of the kind of home must be con- 
sidered. We have found that polygamous fathers and 
polyandrous mothers care little for the young. The with- 
drawal of the interest and care of either parent is a source 
of weakness which can be compensated only by an added 
devotion on the part of the remaining parent. 

We have noted the withdrawal of the father from active 
work for the family. This came with the greater im- 
portance of the mother, which itself was not the result 
of any conscious act. It was a necessary step, following 
the change from external to internal protection, whereby 
the young are retained within the body of the mother. 
Animal parents do not teach us that mothers are always 



134 MOTHERHOOD 

more devoted and self-sacrificing than fathers. Some- 
times, indeed, the contrary would appear to be true. Even 
the mother's instinct to protect and serve the young, which 
seems to increase as we ascend the scale towards human 
parentage, must, I think, be regarded as an extended ego- 
ism. Formed in her body and fed from her sustenance, 
the young are a part of her individuality, and her solici- 
tude for them is but a wider caring for herself. 

There are many surprises in animal parenthood. The 
conduct of the parents may vary within very wide limits, 
and all kinds of devices are employed by different parents 
to ensure, the well-being of the family. Solicitude and 
sacrifice for the young are common, but indifference also 
occurs ; and there are unnatural parents of both sexes who 
shirk family duties. We have found, indeed, the sugges- 
tion of all the virtues of human parents as well as many 
of their sins, every form of devotion and intelligent parent- 
hood as well as examples of folly and neglect. 

We have observed the greatest difference in particular 
in the conduct of the father as regards his participation 
in the work of building the home and in feeding and rear- 
ing the young. Thereby we have learnt that a psychic 
metamorphosis of the male msiy occur, causing him to ful- 
fil the duties of the mother, and that accompanying this is 
an alteration in the character of the female which com- 
pletely transforms her sexual nature. 

An attempt was made to solve this riddle of sex. It 
seems probable that changes in function, by which is 
meant changes in the form of union and conditions of the 
family — as when one sex, for some reason or other, per- 
forms the duties usually undertaken by the other sex — may 
profoundly alter the sexual nature of the individual and 



PARENTHOOD A^ONG HIGHER ANIMALS 135 

modify the differences which 'tend to thrust the sexes apart. 
We cannot know with any certainty. Yet I can see no 
other interpretation of these curious instances of sexual 
transformation, and, if I mistake not, it may be possible in 
this way to cast a light on one of the most difficult prob- 
lems with which we are faced to-day. 

I have asserted again and again that the strength of 
the parental instinct is dependent directly on the oppor- 
tunities for its expression ; which is to say that the parent 
who tends and feeds the young is the parent who loves 
the young. We may go further than this. There is no 
such thing as instinctive motherhood. The emotional 
quality of affection comes later than the birth of offspring, 
and is not dependent on any instinctive feeling in the 
mother. It is the consequence and not the cause of 
parental care. So true it is that sacrifice and forgetful- 
ness of self is the basis of affection. 

The most important result that we have gained from our 
inquiry is a knowledge of the close connection which exists 
between the care of the young and the character and con- 
duct of the parents. You will see what this implies. The 
essential fact for the male and the female — for the mother 
and also for the father — is a development of responsibility 
in fulfilling duties to the family. Neither sex can keep a 
position apart from parenthood. Just in so far as the 
mother and the father attain to consciousness and intelli- 
gent sacrifice in their relation to their offspring do they 
attain individual intelligence, development and joy. To 
me, at least, this is the truth that stands out as the lesson 
to be learnt from these' pre-human parents. 



PART III 

THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 

"Round the fundamental facts of parenthood and 
the dependence of the breeding mother woman has 
built up the tissue of customs and conventions called 
'home,' which expanded in ever widening circles be- 
came society," — E, ComuHOUN. 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VII 

THE MOTHER IN THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 

The importance of the customs of primitive peoples — Such knowledge 
necessary to an understanding of our present family system and 
form of marriage — My earlier book. The Age of Mother-Power— 
This work a necessary part of my present inquiry — Re-statement 
of my own views — An attempt to group the matter to be con- 
sidered — The early period in which man developed from his a'pe- 
like ancestors — Parenthood more fixed, fewer experiments — The 
probable conditions of the primordial human family — Customs of 
brute male-ownership — This the pre-matriarchal stage of the 
family — Progress — The second stage — The growth of the com- 
munal clan — The increasing influence of the women — Reasons 
why this view may be accepted — Mother-descent and mother- 
rights — The importance of tliis early matriarchate — The maternal 
form of marriage — Visiting husbands — Communal dwelling 
houses — Contrast between the customs of the patriarchal indi- 
vidual family and the maternal communal clan — The power of 
the wife and the mother — The alien position of the husband and 
father — The assertion of the male force in the person of the 
woman's brother — The communal clan a transitional stage — The 
re-establishment of the individual patriarchal family — The fix- 
ing of paternity and the rise of the father's power — Lessons to 
be learnt from this past history of the family. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MOTHER IN THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 

(A chapter which may be omitted by the reader who has 
no interest vn the customs of primitive peoples.) 

"The clan exists on account of the struggle for existence, the 
family seeks for the enjoyment of that which they have obtained." — 
Stabcke. 

And now having finished my preliminary study of the 
maternal instinct in the making, having given examples of 
its varied manifestations in the animal kingdom, and made 
clear certain general ideas on parenthood and the family, 
I may hope to go on to consider human mothers and 
fathers with a surer knowledge and less misunderstanding. 
The fitting method of inquiry, and the one I should like to 
employ would be to begin with the lowest forms of the 
human family. I myself am always greatly attracted by 
the customs of primitive peoples, for I was born amongst 
them. I hold that some knowledge of the family and the 
domestic and social conditions still to be found among 
uncivilised races, in all parts of the world, is essential to 
a complete understanding of our own social and sexual 
problems. 

In an earlier work, The Age of Mother-Power^ I have 
given my views on the past history of the family. I have 
attempted to establish the existence of a Mother-age civi- 

1 English title. The Position of Woman in Primitive Society/: A 
Study of Matriarchy. 

14)1 



14a MOTHERHOOD 

lisation, the so-called Matriarchate, described in detail the 
privileged position of the mother, and noted, with many 
examples, the family conditions, sex-customs and forms of 
marriage among primitive peoples. That book should 
form the historical section of this present work. It is, in- 
deed, a necessary part of my inquiry. I am convinced 
that the only way to estimate the value of our present 
family system is to examine the history of that system in 
the past. We find suggestions of primitive customs in 
many directions ; they are shadowed in certain of our 
marriage rites and direct many of our sex habits ; they 
have left unmistakable traces on our literature, in our 
language and in our laws; indeed we may find their in- 
fluence almost everywhere, if we know what to look for 
and how to interpret the signs. The close connection 
which links the present with the past cannot easily be 
neglected. We often say: This or that custom belongs 
to the present era: yet nine times out of ten the thing we 
believe to be new is in reality as old as the history of man- 
kind. Often what we think is a step forward is not so 
at all ; we are going back to a custom and practices long 
discarded. We are less inventive and more bound than we 
know. No period stands alone, and the present in every 
age is merely the shifting ground at which the past and 
the future meet. 

I would therefore ask all those among my readers who 
care to follow in detail the history of the family through 
the long, early, upward stages of its growth, at this point 
to leave this work in order to read The Age of Mother- 
Power, therein to learn what I hold to have been the fam- 
ily conditions in the period known as the Mother-age. 
But as such a course may be impossible, or be disliked, by 



MOTHER IN THE PRIMITIAHE FAMILY 143 

the reader, I will now for our present guidance re-state 
very briefly the main conclusions arrived at by that in- 
vestigation. 

And first it should be noted that the history of human 
parenthood from its earliest known appearance shows an 
orderly progress from the start to the end. There is no 
difficulty even in fixing the beginning. Man, the gorilla, 
the orang and the chimpanzee had a common ancestor, 
and for this reason the parental stages of the great apes 
and of man have an almost startling resemblance. Pro- 
fessor Metchnikoff was so impressed by this likeness that 
he has suggested that the human race may have taken 
its origin from the precocious birth of an ape. We thus 
find no gap that has to be filled: we take up our inquiry 
of the family at the exact place at which we left it. There 
are, of course, changes to fit the parents and the young 
for their new stage of life; more and more instincts are 
modified by experiment and experience. Intelligence 
grows. New habits afford possibilities of advance, and 
suggest the directions in which the family may move. 
There are, however, far fewer experiments, less sharp dif- 
ferences in the conduct of the different parents ; the fam- 
ily shows less flexibility, and the maternal instincts settle 
down, as it were, to an average character, with average 
limitations and an average expression. 

Our most primitive ancestors, half-men, half-brutes, 
lived in small, solitary, and hostile family groups, com- 
posed of an adult male, his wife, or, if he were powerful, 
several wives and their children. In such a group the 
father is the chief or patriarch as long as he lives, and 
the family is held together by their common subjection 
to him. His interest in the family is confined to fighting 



144? MOTHERHOOD 

to drive off rivals, and, for this reason, he drives his sons 
from the home as soon as they are old enough to be dan- 
gerous to his interests : his daughters he adds to his wives, 
unless they are caught and carried off by some other male. 

It was doubtless thus, in a family organisation similar 
to that of the great monkeys, that man first lived. Here 
was the most primitive form of jealous government of the 
family by the male. Such conduct, prompted by the ego- 
istic desires of sex, mark the continuation of the degrada- 
tion in fatherhood, which we noted as occurring among 
the mammals as soon as the father was freed from the 
duties of providing a home and the first feeding and tend- 
ing of the young. 

In the primitive families the idea of descent is feeble so 
that the groups are small and readity disrupted. But 
though originally without explicit consciousness of rela- 
tionships, the members would be held together by a feeling 
of kin. Such feeling would become conscious first between 
the mothers and their children, and in this way mother- 
kin must have been realised at a very early period. The 
father's relationship, on the other hand, would not be forced 
into conscious recognition. He would be a member apart 
from this natural kinship. 

Such were the probable conditions in the primordial hu- 
man family. The important thing to note is that in each 
family group there would be only one adult polygamous 
male, with several women of different ages, and the chil- 
dren of both sexes, all in more or less compete subjection 
to his rule.^ 

These customs of brute-male-ownership are still in great 

'X I am not giving any references in support of the statements 
made in this chapter. The reader is referred to The Age of Mother- 
Power. 



MOTHER IN THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 145 

measure preserved among the least-developed races. This 
may be called the pre-matriarchal stage of the family, and 
its existence explains how there are many rude peoples that 
exhibit no trace at all of mother-descent. In the lowest 
nomad bands of savages of the deserts and forests we still 
find these rough paternal groups, who know no social 
bonds, but are ruled alone by brute strength and jealous 
ownership. With them development has been very slow; 
they have not yet advanced to the social organisation' of 
the maternal family clan. 

From these first solitary families, grouped submissively 
around one tyrant-ruler, we reach a second stage, out of 
which order and organisation sprang. In this second stage 
the family expanded into the larger group of the com- 
munal clan. The change had to come. With the fierce 
struggle for existence, the solitary family-group became 
impossible, association was the only way to prevent ex- 
termination. 

How did the change come.'' 

Now, it is part of my conviction that the earliest move- 
ments towards peace and expansion of the family came 
through the influence of women. I must state briefly my 
reasons for this view. 

In the first place it certainly would be in the women's 
interests to consolidate the home and the family, and, by 
means of union, to establish their own power. What we 
desire and fix our attention upon, as a rule, is what we do. 
In the early groups the mothers with their adult daughters 
and the young of both sexes would live on tei-ms of associa- 
tion as friendly hearthmates. Such is the marked differ- 
ence in the position of the two sexes — the solitary jealous 
unsocial male and the united women. 



146 MOTHERHOOD 

The strongest factor in this association would arise 
from the dependence of the children upon their mothers, a 
dependence that was of much longer duration than among 
the animals on account of the pre-eminent helplessness of 
the human child, which entailed a more prolonged infancy. 
The women and the children would form the family-group, 
to which the male was attached by his sexual needs, but he 
remained always apart — a kind of jealous fighting spe- 
cialist. The temporary hearth-home would be the shelter 
of the women. It was under this shelter that children were 
born and the group accumulated its members. Whether 
cave, or hollow tree, or frail branch shelter, the home must 
have belonged to the women. 

It is clear that under these conditions the female mem- 
bers of the group-family must necessarily have been at- 
tached to the home much more closely than the man, whose 
desire lay in the opposite direction, and whose conduct by 
constant jealous fights tended to the disruption of the home. 
Moreover this home attachment would be present always 
and acting on the female members, as the daughters — un- 
less captured by other males — would remain in the home as 
additional wives to their father ; on the other hand, it could 
never arise in the case of the sons, whose fate was to be 
driven out from the hearth-home as soon as they were old 
enough to become rivals to their father. Such conditions 
must, as time went on, have profoundly modified the female 
outlook, bending the desire of the women to a steady settled 
life, conditions under which alone the family could expand 
and social organisation develop. 

Again, the daily search for the daily food must surely 
have been undertaken chiefly by the women. For it is im- 
possible that one man, however skilful a hunter, could have 



MOTHER IN THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 147 

fed all the female members and children of the group. Fur- 
ther than this, we may, I think, conceive that much of his 
attention and hi: time would be occupied in fighting his 
rivals ; also his strength as sole progenitor must have been 
expended largely in sex. It is, therefore, probable that the 
male was dependent on the food activities of his women. 

The mothers, their inventive faculties quickened by the 
stress of the needs of their children, would try to convert 
to their own uses the most available portion of their own 
environment. It would be under their attention that plants 
were first utilised for food, seeds planted and nuts and 
fruit stored, birds would also be snared, fish caught, and 
animals tamed for service. Primitive domestic vessels and 
baskets would be fashioned and clothes have to be made. 
All the faculties of the women, in exercises that would lead 
to the development of every part of their bodies and their 
minds, would be called into play by the work of satisfying 
the physical needs of the group. 

In all these numerous activities tl^ women of each group 
would work together. And through this co-operation must 
have resulted the assertion of the women's power, as the 
directors and organisers of industrial occupations. 

As the group slowly advanced in progress, such power, 
increasing, would raise the mother's position; the women 
would establish themselves permanently as of essential value 
in the family, not only as the givers of life, but as the 
chief providers of the food essential to the preservation of 
the life of its members. 

And a further result would follow in the treatment by 
the males of this new order. The women by obtaining and 
preparing food would gain an economic value. Wives 
would become to the husband a source of riches indispens- 



148 MOTHERHOOD 

able to him, not only on account of his sex needs, but on 
account of the more persistent need of food. Thus the 
more women he possessed the greater would be his own 
comfort, and the physical prosperity of the group. 

And again, a further result would follow. The greater 
the number of women in the group the stronger would be- 
come their power of combination. I attach great impor- 
tance to this. Working together for the welfare of all, the 
maternal instinct of sacrifice would be greatly strengthened 
in the women so that necessarily they would come to con- 
sider the collective interests of the family. Can it be 
credited that such conditions could have acted upon the 
males, whose conduct would still be inspired by individual 
appetite and selfish inclination? I maintain such a view 
to be impossible. 

Another advantage, I think, would arise for the women. 
From the circumstances of the family their interest in sex 
must have been less acute in consciousness than that of 
the male. They mus|f have gained freedom from being 
less occupied with love, and from being less jealously in- 
terested in the male than he was in them. Doubtless each 
woman would be attracted by the male's courageous action 
in fighting his rivals for possession of her, but when the 
rival was the woman's own son such attraction would come 
into strong conflict with the deeper maternal instinct. Thus 
the unceasing sexual preoccupation of the male, with the 
emotional dependence it entailed on the females, must, I 
would suggest, have given the women an immense advan- 
tage. They would come to use their sex charms as an ac- 
cessory of success. And if I am right here, the husband 
would be in the power of his women, much more surely than 
they would be in his power. 



MOTHER IN THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 149 

From the standpoint of physical strength the male was 
the master, the tyrant ruler of the family, who, doubtless, 
often was brutal enough. But the women with their chil- 
dren, leading an independent life to some extent, and with 
their mental ingenuity developed by the conditions of their 
life, would learn, I believe, to outwit their masters by pas- 
sive united resistance. The mothers and daughters may 
even have asserted their will in rebellion. I picture, indeed, 
these savage women ever striving for more privilege, and 
step by step advancing through peaceful combination to 
power. 

Such conditions as those I have briefly pictured could 
not fail to domesticate the women. They must have acted 
also in strengthening the bonds between the mothers and 
their children and in making more conscious the strong in- 
stinct of maternal sacrifice. 

But mark this : I do not wish to set up any claim for, 
because I do not believe in, the superiority of one sex over 
the other sex. Character is determined by the conditions 
of living. If, as I conceive, progress came through the 
mothers, rather than through the father, it was because the 
conditions were really more favourable to them, and drove 
them on in the right path. Collective motives were more 
considered by women, not at all because of any higher 
standard of moral virtue, but because of the peculiar ad- 
vantages arising to themselves and to their children — ad- 
vantages of peaceful family association which could not 
exist in a group ruled by individual inclination. 

During the development of the family, we may expect 
to find that the males will seek to hold their rights, and that 
the women of the group will exert their influence more and 
more in breaking these down; and this is precisely what 



150 MOTHERHOOD 

we do find. And for this reason the clan system, which 
developed from these solitary hostile families, must be con- 
sidered as a feminine creation, which had special relation 
to motherhood. 

The sexual egoism by which one male, through his 
strength and seniority, held marital rights over all the fe- 
males of his group had to be struck at its roots. In other 
words, the solitary despot had to learn to tolerate the asso- 
ciation of other adult males. 

It is impossible for me here to follow step by step the 
means whereby this change was brought about. I would, 
however, assert my strong belief that it was the mothers, 
acting in the interests of their children, who tamed the 
jealous desires and domesticated the males. The adult 
sons, instead of being driven from the home by the father, 
were permitted to remain as members of the family group 
and to bring in young wives captured from other families. 
At a later stage, daughters received husbands, young males 
from other groups, who came first as temporary lovers, 
visiting their brides by night, but afterwards remained 
with them as permanent guests in the home of the mother. 
Under these new conditions, the marital rights of the male 
members were restricted and confined. A system of taboos 
was established, which, as time advanced, was greatly 
strengthened by the use of sacred totem marks, and became 
of inexorable strictness. 

In this way peace was established, and association be- 
tween the jealous fighting males was made possible. 

Here, then, are the reasons which led to the formation 
of the maternal family and the communal clan. It de- 
pended, in the first place, on the development of mutual 
aid between mother and offspring, based on the much closer 



MOTHER IN .THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 151 

relationship of the children to their mothers than to the 
father. As soon as the women of the family-group by 
combination were able to outwit and curb the jealous rule 
of the father, the matriarchal clan developed from the 
primitive patriarchal family. 

The contrast between the family and clan seems to me 
of great importance. Individual relationships became of 
less importance ; the clan did not consist of groups of fam- 
ilies but of individuals. I have stated that the sexual re- 
lationships between the young people began with the re- 
ception by the daughters of temporary lovers in the clan- 
home. A connection thus formed would tend under 
favourable circumstances to be continued and would be 
perpetuated as a marriage. Thus it came to be the custom 
for the husband to live temporarily or permanently in the 
wife's home and among her kindred. Here he was com- 
pelled to work for the general good ; he was without prop- 
erty or any recognised rights in the clan ; he was not per- 
mitted a separate home, and was left with no — or very lit- 
tle — control over his wife and none over the children of 
the marriage. He occupied, indeed, the position 
of a more or less permanent guest in the maternal hut 
or tent. 

Under such an organisation the family— the first group 
of the father, wives and children — is swallowed up in the 
larger clan. The male has no position of mastery over 
the female. As time goes on, the clan becomes more and 
more a free association for mutual protection, ruled over 
by the ablest and most capable members. Not only does 
the father not stand out as a principal person from the 
background of the familial clan ; he has not even any recog- 
nised domestic rights in connection with his own wife and 



152 MOTHERHOOD 

children. This restriction of the husband and father was 
clearly dependent on the form of marriage. 

The later modifications of the communal clan and the 
social customs that grew up, in most cases — and always, I 
believe, in the complete maternal form — were favourable to 
the authority of the mothers. Kinship was reckoned 
through the mother, the totem name was taken from her, 
since in this way alone could the undivided family be main- 
tained. The continuity of the clan thus depending on the 
women they were placed in a position of importance; the 
mother was at least the nominal head of the household, 
shaping the destiny of the clan through the aid of her 
kindred. 

All the members of such a compound family were re- 
sponsible for the offences of any individual member; and 
in the same way the clan exacted blood vengeance or com- 
pensation collectively for any offence committed against its 
members. But the men belonged to their own clans, that is, 
to the clans of their mothers ; they did not belong to and 
had no rights in the clan of which their wife and children 
were members. As husbands and fathers they were with- 
out power. This is very important. The woman's closest 
male relation was not her husband, but her brother, who 
acted as father to her children. 

A pure type of matriarchal family fully preserved is 
rare. There are scattered tribes in different parts of the 
world where descent is still reckoned through the mother. 
Some features favourable to women are found in one com- 
munity, some in another. The sexual relationships, in 
particular, are interesting. The girl is frequently the 
wooer of the man, and in certain cases she or her mother 
imposes the conditions of the marriage. After marriage. 



MOTHER IN THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 153 

the free provisions for divorce (often more favourable to 
the wife than to the husband) are, perhaps, of even greater 
significance. 

There are many traces of discipline exercised in the 
bringing up of children and more or less systematic train- 
ing of boys in endurance, speed, courage, etc. This task 
falls to the mother's brother. The daughters are instructed 
by the mothers and the matrons of the tribe in all that 
concerns their duties as wives and mothers. 

The woman is subject to the authority of her eldest 
brother, and sometimes as well to that of her other brothers, 
her uncles and male relations. But descent being reckoned 
in the female line, and the fact that she is the conduit by 
which property passes to and from the men, gives the 
woman a position of very considerable, though varying, 
importance. 

In all cases the power of the wife is clearly dependent 
on the maternal f oiTn of marriage. I must insist upon this. 
Where this custom of the husband living in the home of 
the wife was practised for any long period, the women often 
established their own claims and all property was held by 
them; conditions which, under favourable circumstances, 
developed into what may literally be called a matriarchate. 
Elder women among some tribes are the heads of kinsfolk, 
they even have a seat or voice in the tribal council, and 
there have been exceptional cases of female tribal chiefs. 
Religion is in some periods in the hands of women, and god- 
desses are more reverenced than gods. Here is certain 
proof of the favourable influence mother-descent may ex- 
ercise on the authority, held by women. In all circum- 
stances the children's position was dependent on the mother 
and her kindred. 



154 MOTHERHOOD 

Such a system of inheritance may be briefly summarised 
as mother-right. 

Other forms of marriage are found ; indeed, every pos- 
sible experiment in family and sexual association has been 
tried and is still practised among barbarous races, often 
with very little reference to those moral ideas to which we 
are accustomed. It is, however, very necessary to remem- 
ber that monogamy is frequent and indeed usual under the 
maternal system. When the husband lives with his wife 
in a dependent position to her family, he can do so only in 
the case of one woman. For this reason polygamy is much 
less deeply rooted under the conditions in which the com- 
munal life of the compound family is developed than in the 
single patriarchal family. Polygamy is an indication, if 
not always a proof, of the subordination of women to the 
headship of the husband. In the complete maternal fam- 
ily it is never common and is even prohibited. 

It was quite otherwise with polyandry, and though less 
usual than monogamy, this form of association is in some 
cases connected with the conditions of the maternal clan. 
I do not believe it can be regarded as due to a licentious 
view of the sexual relations, but arose as an expression of 
the communism which was characteristic of such an or- 
ganisation. 

The whole subject of primitive sexual relationships — 
which, of course, involves the family, the position of woman 
and the welfare of the children — is a very wide and com- 
plicated one. If I differ on several important points from 
learned authorities, whose knowledge and research far ex- 
ceed my own, I do so only after great hesitation, and be- 
cause I must. Almost invariably the writers on these ques- 
tions are men, and perhaps for this reason the position of 



MOTHER IN>.THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 155 

women has not received the attention that it claims. My 
own studies have convinced me that in the early beginnings 
of the human family women exercised a more direct and 
stronger influence than is usually believed. This is no 
fanciful idea of my own, as I claim to have proved in my 
earlier book/ where it was possible to bring forward in 
detail the evidence I have collected on the subject. 

But even in this brief summary enough has been said to 
give in rough outline some picture of the family under 
the conditions of the maternal communal clan. We have 
marked the steady strengthening of the tie between the 
mother and the child, with the corresponding movement in 
the opposite direction in regard to the father's position in 
the family. All the chances for success in parenthood 
rested with the mother, rather than with the father. The 
male was driven out from the holy circle of the family. 
This degradation of fatherhood is a fact that must be kept 
before our attention.^ 

There is, however, another side to the matter. In the 
face of what we have established, it must, I think, be ac- 
cepted that women held considerable power in this period 
of mother-descent and under the maternal form of mar- 
riage. The mother was dominant in the family in this 
second stage of its development. This is still denied by 

1 The Age of Mother-Power. 

2 1 would wish to say here that I did not consider this question 
sufficiently when I wrote The Age of Mother-Power. I was, per- 
haps, carried away by the advantages to women of the maternal 
system of reckoning descent. Such a system could be preserved 
only under the conditions of the communal clan. This necessitated 
the absorption of the individual family, which must consist of father, 
mother and children. I 'hold this to be a greater evil than the 
wrongs — great as those wrongs undoubtedly were — that came in 
family relationships with the re-establishment of the patriarchal 
home. 



156 MOTHERHOOD 

some authorities. There are many facts of the 
early power of women which the great world does not 
know. 

How, then, are we to come to a decision.'* Shall we look 
back to the maternal stage as the golden period of the 
family wherein were realised conditions of free motherhood, 
which even to-day have not been established.'* It is a ques- 
tion very difficult to answer, and we must not in any haste 
rush into mistakes. And unfortunately the limitation of 
my space can allow only the briefest consideration of the 
matter. 

We find that the mother-age was a transitional stage in 
the history of the growth of society, and we can trace the 
stages of its gradual decline. There is nothing to show 
that the customs of maternal communism, dependent on 
descent traced in the female line and the maternal form of 
marriage, have ever been permanently maintained in any 
progressive society. The enlarged family of the maternal 
clan is thus proved to have been a less stable social system 
than the patriarchal single family which again succeeded 
it, or it would not have perished in the struggle with it. 
I think this must be accepted. 

Within the large and undivided group-family of the clan, 
the restricted family became gradually re-established by a 
reassertion of domestic interests. In proportion as the 
family gained in importance (which would arise as the 
struggle for existence lessened and the need of associa- 
tion was less imperative) the interests of the individual 
members would become separated from the group to which 
they belonged. As society advanced and personal prop- 
erty began to be acquired, each man w^ould aim at gaining 
a more exclusive right over his wife and children ; he would 



MOTHER IN JHE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 157 

not willingly submit to the bondage of the maternal form 
of marriage. 

We find the husband and father moving towards the 
position of a fully acknowledged legal parent by a system 
of buying off his wife and her children from their clan- 
group. Then the payment of a bride-price was claimed 
from the bridegroom by the bride's relations, and an act 
of purchase was accounted essential before marriage ; it 
was, however, regarded as a condition, not so much of 'the 
marriage itself, but of the transference of the wife to the 
home of the husband and of the children to his kindred. 
The change was, of course, effected slowly; often we find 
the two forms of marriage — the maternal form and the 
purchase-marriage — occurring side by side. What, how- 
ever, is certain is that the purchase-marriage in the struggle 
was the one which prevailed. 

This reversal in the form of the marriage brought about 
a corresponding reversal in the position of the woman in 
the sexual relationship. This is so plain. As the patri- 
archate developed, and men began to gain individual pos- 
session of their children by the purchase of their mothers, 
the father became the dominant power in the family. 
Women no longer are the transmitters of property and of 
the family name, but are themselves property passing from 
the hands of their kindred to those of a husband. As pur- 
chased wives, they reside in the husband's house and among 
his kin, where they occupy the same position of disadvan- 
tage in the family as the husband and father had done un- 
der the maternal marriage. The protection of her own 
kindred was the source of the wife's privileged position. 
This now was lost. The change was not brought about 
without a struggle, and for long the old customs contended 



158 MOTHERHOOD 

with the new. But step by step the man became the father- 
master in the home. 

It is, however, very necessary to remember that this re- 
versal in the marriage custom may well have been brought 
about as much by the desire of the women as by the action 
of the men. I believe that the change to the individual 
family must have been regarded favourably by primitive 
women. An arrangement which would give a closer rela- 
tionship in marriage and the protection of a husband for 
herself and her children may well have been preferred by 
the wife to the position of subjection in which she was fre- 
quently placed to the authority of her brother and her own 
relatives. Nor do I think it unlikely that she, quite as 
strongly as the man, may have desired to live apart from 
her mother and her kindred in her husband's home. We 
have to remember that the reassertion of the father within 
the family-group was a necessary step, and one that had 
to be taken. The mother is bound to the family by her 
children in a much closer way than the man ever can be 
bound. And for this reason any conditions which separate 
the father from the home and liberate him from his re- 
sponsibilities to his children are certain not to act in the 
direction of progress. The male needs to be held to the 
family. This is a fact much too* often forgotten. 

The social clan organised around the mothers carried 
mankind a long way — a way the length of which we are 
only beginning to realise. But it could not carry man- 
kind forward to the closer family ties and family life from 
which so much was afterwards to develop. The clan sys- 
tem was essential to the conditions of primitive life, owing 
to the fierce struggle to exist, and it could then limit and 
interfere with the family on every side. But as soon as life 



MOTHER IN THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY 159 

was easier, men wanted to establish a home with wife and 
children and to enjoy the possession of property. And 
women wanted this too. It was not possible for the fam- 
ily to be permanentl}^ absorbed. I must insist upon this 
again. The individual family — that is, the trinity com- 
posed of father, mother and child — is the older and the 
more lasting institution. 

I affirm, further, that of the two forms of the f amily^ the 
individual limited form is the one that is the more natural 
and happy. Special circumstances may make necessary 
the enlarged social family, but such conditions are not 
really a step forward. 

With all the evils and restrictions that father-right and 
the individual family-group may, throughout the ages, 
have brought to women, we have got to remember that the 
woman owes the individual relationship in love and the pro- 
tection of the man for herself and her children to the 
patriarchal system. The father's right in his children 
(which, unlike the right of the mother, was not founded 
upon kinship, but rested on the quite different and inse- 
cure basis of property) had to be re-established. Without 
this being done, the family in its fairness and complete 
development was impossible. The survival value of the 
patriarchal family consists in the additional gain to the 
children of the father's to the mother's care. I do not think 
this gain can ever safely be lost. 



PART IV 

MOTHERHOOD AND THE RELATIONSHIPS OF 

THE SEXES 

"For the great majority of mankind at least it can 
be held that life resolves itself quite simply and ob- 
viously into three cardinal phases. There is a period 
of youth and preparation, a great insurgence of emo- 
tion and enterprise centring about the passion of 
Love ; and a third period in which, arising amidst the 
warmth and stir of the second, interweaving indeed 
with the second, the care and love of offspring be- 
comes the central interest in life. . . , Looking 
at this with a primary regard to its broadest aspect, 
life is seen essentially as a matter of reproduction ; 
first a growth and training to that end, then com- 
monly mating and actual physical reproduction, and 
finally the consummation of these things in parental 
nurture and education. Love, Home and Children, 
these are the heart-words of life," — H. G. Wells, 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VIII 

THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 

Attacks on the family not likely to destroy it — Dominance of the 
male may be changed without altering the fundamental ideal 
of the family — Bernard Shaw ignorant of human needs — Two 
statements by H. G. Wells — The inhuman ideals of intellectual 
reformers — Trained hands to replace mother's love — Foolish 
egoism the basis of the whole argument — The sweated victim of 
an industrial age is the ideal emancipated woman — The power 
of the mother in non-industrial societies — Modern uncertainty 
and want of a fixed standard of conduct — The extension of 
women's work during the war — Is it of benefit to the coming 
generation — Can the mother both work outside the home and 
give sufficient care to her children — Woman's subordinate qualities 
are man's dominant qualities — Hence the wastefulness of rivalry 
in the same work — Early experiments in communist families — 
The child's need for a home of its own — We must insist on con- 
ditions that will make home life possible — Types of mothers — 
The personal rights of the child — The position of the father — 
The father can be detached from the family — This harmful — The 
child's need for the care of both its parents — The home exposed 
to danger — It awaits a fresh inspiration to turn back and hold 
the desires of women. 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 



"The ideal which the mother and wife makes for herself, the 
manner in which she understands duty and life, contain the fate 
of the community." — Amiel's Journal. 

There are some who hold that the family rests on a 
trembling quicksand, and state that its supporters are com- 
pelled to weave a network of lies to sustain its foundation. 
We hear much wild talk, and a great deal is said about 
the restrictions imposed by the family, and very little about 
its duties and its joys. There is, and I think its existence 
must be faced, a growing tide of discontent which would 
seem to render the stability of the home more and more 
precarious — the faint-hearted cry to us that everything 
is coming to an end. It is not so, but rather, everything is 
about to be renewed. 

Institutions as vital to life as the family will continue. 
From the most distant period of life, among the animals 
as among mankind, the history of the family has been a 
long series of regenerations. We have found witness to 
this again and again in the past records of pre-human 
and primitive human parenthood. And, indeed, the most 
important result we have gained from our long inquiry 
is the abundant proof it has furnished of the indestructible 
character of the family. 

Wherever the individual family (the lasting union of 
the male with the female for the protection of the young) 

165 



166 MOTHERHOOD 

has been departed from for some other and perhaps freer 
form of sexual association a return has followed. Special 
conditions have called forth experiments, new family ar- 
rangements, but in no case have they become universal and 
permanent. We cannot argue against all that the past 
teaches us. And assuredly the history of the family turns 
into foolishness many reforms that, in our blindness, we 
are seeking to-day. We believe they will bring progress 
and freedom to women. But what sure ground have we 
for such a belief? In truth we have much to learn. 

Institutions have this in common with rivers, they do not 
readily flow backwards. If they sometimes seem to retro- 
grade, it is generally only a mere appearance, and though 
tributary streams break away in experimental courses the 
main river flows on. You will see what I mean by this. 
The changes that will take place, and have for long been 
taking place, have been changes not affecting the funda- 
mental qualities in the ideal of the family — its permanence, 
the fidelity of its partners in thought and deed, its senti- 
ments and its obligations of joyous sacrifice in united 
parental care. Attacks have altered (and it is well that 
they have altered) the dominance of the male. The patri- 
archal customs of proprietary ownership are gradually dis- 
appearing both for the wife and for the children. The 
family has broadened. The feeling of hostility to the outer 
world, the self-centredness — much that limited the family 
is being changed. But the idea of the family, and its 
value as one of the most essential forms of social life, re- 
mains unaffected. 

And mark this : No ideals whatever have been 'produced 
by even the most progressive and enlightened persons to 
replace the family group. 



THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 167 

The wild reforms contemplated by some among us, who 
talk, but fortunately do not act, arc fog and nonsense. 

The home, in particular, has been spoken of with con- 
tempt. Thus, Bernard Shaw, who in the reforms he advo- 
cates fails so frequently to see the real human needs of 
life, cries: "Home is the girls' prison and the woman's 
workhouse." Again, W. L. George in Women and To- 
morrow (a "To-morrow" which, by the way, I trust I may 
never live to see) states: "The home is the enemy of 
Woman. Purporting to be her protector, it is her op- 
pressor. It is her fortress, but she does not live in the 
state apartments, she lives in a dungeon." 

Mr. H. G. Wells, in a much more recent utterance, 
wherein he professes to forecast "What is Coming," speaks 
even more strongly, and all the present conditions are es- 
timated. He states: *'Now, to be married is an incident 
in a iwoman's career, as in a man's.'' (The italics are 
mine.) "There is not the same necessity of that household, 
not the same close tie ; the married woman remains partially 
a freewoman and assimilates herself to the freewoman. 
There is an increasing disposition to group solitary chil- 
dren and to delegate their care to specially qualified people ; 
and this is likely to increase, because the high earning 
power of young women will incline them to entrust their 
children to others." 

And again, at the conclusion of his article on "The War 
and Women," Mr. Wells sums up the situation as follows : 
"To sum all that has gone before, this war is accelerating 
rather than deflecting the stream of tendency, and is bring- 
ing us rapidly to a state of affairs in which women will be 
much more definitely independent of their sexual status, 
much less hampered in their self-development and much 



168 MOTHERHOOD 

more nearly equal to men than has ever been known before 
in the whole history of mankind." 

Now, if these two late pronouncements of Mr. Wells are 
compared with what he wrote a few years back, with the 
quotation from Mankind in the Making which I have placed 
before this section of my book because it so well expresses 
my own views, I think the harm that of late years has been 
working is strongly evident ; harm that is incredibly ac- 
tive in our consciousness.^ 

Such talk of my sex as "freewomen" and of a liberation 
from the sexual life, as if that could be possible, fills me 
with impatience. I would not wait to notice it did I not 
believe that the hurt done to women had been deep and far- 
reaching. It has increased for them the difficulty of uni- 
fying life. And this uncertainty of desire is, as I believe, 
the modern disease which has worked such havoc in the 
souls of women. I would like to silence all useless, impious 
negators ; those who, seeking to be clever, really are 
blinkered, and unable to see the results that would follow 
from their destructions. The error in all these outcries is 
the error of blindness, of getting into a condition of con- 
fused intellectual excitement, and because some women are 
dissatisfied and have been unhappy, saying, therefore, and 
usually with passion, that they would be more satisfied if 
all the sex were freed from its own duties. As if freedom 

iThe reader is referred to a new book on feminism that has 
come into my hands while reading the proofs of this chapter, To- 
wards a Sane Feminism, by Wilma Meikle. The book is instructive 
as expressing the views of the younger suffragists. Note especially 
the three chapters, "Simplifying Sex Problems," "How to be Moral 
though Married," and "Between the Home and the Labour Market." 
One short sentence I quote which clearly shows the opinions held 
by the writer, "The truth is that Motherhood is one of the most 
casual of all relationships and one of the shortest-lived." Any 
comment from me on this smart folly is unnecessary. 



THE FA3MILY AND THE HOME 169 

were ever gained by running away. The intellectual re- 
former is so very far from understanding the real human 
needs. There is, for instance, a significant omission in the 
quotations I have given — no mention is made of the re- 
sults of all this to the child, and no suggestion is offered 
except that it should be trained and cared for by experts 
and apart from its parents. The home is to go because it 
restricts the liberty of women and will hinder their earn- 
ing power, as if this were all that had to be considered. I 
can hardly find a more striking example of how far the 
apparently simple and elemental things escape the atten- 
tion of the intellectual reformer. 

In the society in which we are living, the only use that 
can be made of modern progressive teaching about the 
family — ^the only ounces of practice to be derived from 
pounds of precept — will lead, as I believe, to a very unde- 
sirable course of action. The programme for the abolition 
of the home has been outlined for us by reformers of both 
sexes. Communal houses and kitchens, and the interven- 
tion of armies of experts, are to solve the problems which 
now keep women tied in the individual home. The parents 
are to be supplanted by "born educators." Successive in- 
stitutions are planned for the bottle-period, kindergarten, 
school age, and so on. The children are to stand on visit- 
ing relations to the individual home and their parents, while 
their bodies and souls are to be cared for by specialists. 
And we are asked to believe that this will be a gain to the 
child ! " It is the trained hand that the baby needs, not 
mere blood relationship . . . personal love is too hot 
an atmosphere for the' young soul."^ 

1 The quotation is taken from the well-known book of Mrs. Per- 
kins Oilman, who gave the earliest expression to this false view of 
what is good for the child. 



170 MOTHERHOOD 

Now, if I wanted a general term to express the state of 
mind of these reformers, I do seriously think the word 
inhuman would be as near to it as any. Some people talk 
as if there were no emotional qiiality to decide these ques- 
tions; they are dry-minded and quite unable to grasp the 
true values in life. 

And the essence of all such foUy is an insupportable 
egoism. The whole argument against the home is based on 
the claim of woman to lead an independent life. Indepen- 
dent of what ^ It is not easy to answer. It is asserted that 
the ideal of the home as the special care of woman has tied 
her to material things; it is urged that her emancipation 
from the fetish of the home is essential for her soul's free- 
dom. The feminists ask us to make the wage-earning 
woman our ideal, instead of regarding her, as I do, as the 
unfortunate victim of industrial life and industrial 
ideals — and this is a very dangerous attitude and 
one which cannot fail to affect very seriously the 
fate of the home in the future. It is this that 
causes me such grave fear. The ideals that we set 
before us do exercise an influence greater than we 
know. 

Now, I am not much moved by this modern cry for 
liberty. What is this freedom for which women have been 
clamouring? In what tyranny are they held other than 
that in which their womanhood holds them? Is the new 
liberty to be found as sweated workers? Will it come even 
now when women's industrial work is being sought for and 
well paid? Can it ever come from the fevered effort to 
live the same lives as men live and do the same work that 
men do? 

But this kind of view is of a most superficial sort, and 



THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 171 

one that, comparatively speaking, is new. Before the com- 
ing of industrialism the ideals of women were far different 
and were centred in the home. The family was then firmly 
established on the patriarchal system. 

I have just read a Russian book ^ which gives a perfect 
picture of the patriarchal home. The scene is described by 
a child: the heati of the house has died and the new male- 
head comes from the death-bed. He is thus received by the 
women of the house — 

"Suddenly the door opened, and my father came in. He looked 
thin and pale and sad. Instantly all rose and went to meet him; 
even grandmother, who was very stout and could not walk without 
some one supporting her, dragged herself towards him, and all his 
four sisters fell down at his feet and began to 'keen.' It was im- 
possible to catch all they said and part I now forget, but I re- 
member the words, 'You are our father now: be kind to us poor 
orphans.' My father with tears lifted them all up and embraced 
them; when his mother advanced towards him, he bowed to the 
ground before her, kissed her hands, and vowed that he would 
always submit to her authority, and that no changes would be made 
by him. . . . They then sat down to eat so heartily — my mother 
did not — that T watched them with astonishment. My Aunt Tatyana 
helped fish-soup out of a large tureen, and, as she put bits of roe 
and liver on the plates, she begged all to do justice to them: 'How 
poor father loved the roe and the liver !' " 

Now, to the self-assertive, feminist mind, imbued with 
industrial ideals, this scene may make no appeal. Its peace 
is too quiet. Here is none of the modern unrest, the bore- 
dom, the moving about in worlds unrealised. But I do not 
think this will be noted. The one suggestion that will leap 
to the thoughts is the dependent position of the women. 
This is true, but it is equally true that the power of the 
women is far greater 'than it is in any industrial home. 
And we find that such power is not exercised by the young 

1 Years of Childhood, by Serge Aksakoff, trans, by J. D. Duff. 



17^ MOTHERHOOD 

women and on account of any sexual attraction, in the way 
to which we are accustomed and have come to expect, but 
the power is held by the mother, whose desires through life 
are a law to her son. I can hardly emphasise too strongly 
this power and influence of the mother at all times when 
the family is firmly established. I think it must be granted 
that the mother has lost her position of influence in the 
home wherever industrial views of life have penetrated. 
She has little power over her grown-up sons or even over 
her daughters. Self-assertion is also the desire of the chil- 
dren; they want to break away from the mother. Per- 
haps this is inevitable, and maybe it is right. It is very 
difficult to be certain. 

I will not dwell on this question. I would, however, ask 
you to keep fixed in your attention this hesitation that has 
entered as a disease into our modern consciousness. We are 
without purpose, and have no absolute standard of con- 
duct. And the result for most of us is a life of confused 
aims, restless and seeking, achieving by accident what is 
achieved at all. 

There have been, of course, many separate causes and 
influences uniting to bring this unrest, but the disorganisa- 
tion of the patriarchal home, with the change in the ideal 
and desires of women, has acted very strongly as a dis- 
turbing force. We have lost, especially, that harmony in 
life which woman alone is able to create. 

Within the patriarchal family-group women lived a life 
that was complete in itself, the home was self-contained be- 
cause it included all the elements necessary for the carrying 
on of a useful and healthy life. True this home life, com- 
plete as it was in itself, was not life in the fullest sense of 
living, for it lacked some of the larger elements that only 



THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 173 

freedom of action can give. It was for women a restricted, 
and, in later times, even a stunted life: in the end it came 
to be a parasitic life. But for long it was a natural and 
satisfying life and it was always entirely feminine, because 
motherhood embraced it all, inspiring every motive and 
guiding every act. 

What we want is the family reconstructed, with all its 
historic bonds of unity and sanctity preserved and yet fitted 
to meet modern needs. It must be a home where life can be 
lived in its fulness and its depth. It is clear that this recon- 
struction is not going to be easy. Such a task must even 
be held to be absurd, if we view life from the modem stand- 
point, which can only be that of the doctrine of self- 
assertion. Where the Self is so insistent, there can be no 
consciousness of duty as something fixed and of life as 
being purposive, consecrated to an end, which may not be 
left or taken up. And the first thing necessary is to break 
through the separate aims that cause such confusion in 
women's thoughts and desires. No standard of action can 
be fixed until we know what we want. Separation must 
arise from self-assertion. Nothing worth doing can be 
done until the collective consciousness of women has found 
itself and regained a unifying ideal. 

Life at the moment is in a state of too violent instability 
for any attempts to reconstruct the home to be of any avail, 
and, in any case, it is difficult to believe that any new form 
of the family can in modern times exercise the sway that the 
patriarchal system wielded in times gone by. And yet some 
standard we must have, or the confusion in women's lives 
will go on, and all feminine idealism must perish through 
the very number of its varieties. 

Now, it may be that the forces which acted against the 



174 MOTHERHOOD 

family in its past history are acting again to-day. Com- 
munal living and group homes have been tried already in 
the beginnings of civilisation. They were developed on 
account of conditions of danger which threatened the prim- 
itive family-groups, forcing them to unite with one another 
for mutual protection and help.^ To-day again the home 
is threatened. Industrialism has steadily undermined its 
foundations, and changed the desire of women. Industrial 
workers have departed far indeed from the ideal of abso- 
lute self -dedication and service to the home that once was 
the supreme conception of woman. And now a further step 
has been taken. War has made necessary conditions that 
industrialism first taught women to desire. For the first 
time in our industrial history a demand has arisen for 
women's labour as pressing and large as the supply. Hun- 
dreds and thousands of women and girls have been called 
from their homes to carry on the necessary work of the 
country. There are already 195,000 women employed in 
munition work, while 275,000 more women are engaged in 
industrial occupations.^ 

Women have shown that there is hardly any work of men 
that they cannot do. They are driving motor-lorries, they 
are working on the railways, acting as conductors on trams 
and buses ; they are doing the postman's round and car- 
man's deliveries ; they are ploughing and sowing the land ; 
they are standing long hours at the mechanic's lathe. 
Women are everywhere. 

And day by day the country is calling for more, and yet 



1 See note on p. 155. 

2 These were the numbers given in the debate in Parliament, April 
4, 1916, at the time of writing this chapter. They will be much, 
much larger before my book is finished and published. 



THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 175 

more women workers. They are wanted oh the land, they 
are wanted in the factories, they are wanted in the shops, 
in offices, in schools, they are wanted in every kind of 
industry. Women will answer the call; they will take the 
places of those who have gone to fight, for their patriotism 
is as strong as the patriotism of men. That women should 
work to-day is unavoidable: it is war. 

Yet necessary as this working of women is for the dura- 
tion of war, it is equally necessary that the conditions of 
their labour should be regulated to meet the special needs 
of their feminine constitution. In all cases where women 
are doing men's w ork they should work shorter hours, have 
longer rests and more holidays. Do we understand what 
the results of overwork may be? It is racial suicide to 
allow adolescent girls and young women, who are, or who 
will be, mothers, to do work which may break into or over- 
strain their reserve strength, using up now what ought to 
be given to the next generation. A nation's wealth and 
future depend directly on the health and nerve reserve of 
its women. It is deplorable that these forces of life are 
being used so wastefully. I know well that in the confu- 
sion of the times it is not easy to get public attention for 
the needs of women workers. Yet the importance of this 
matter is such that delay may be disastrous. 

A further consideration arises, and one, too, that is vital. 
After the war, what will happen ? Peace is the normal state 
of the world and we shall return to it — some day. Are 
these conditions of continuous work for women to go on 
then ? There is much to cause grave fear. Women — and I 
have spoken to many of them on the subject — seem to 
regard this taking on of men's work, not as a temporary 
thing forced on them by the necessities of war, but as the 



176 MOTHERHOOD 

gaining of a goal for which for long they have been 
fighting. 

Here is some of the talk that I have heard at women's 
meetings or read in recent articles by feminist writers: 
" New fields of action lie open to women on all sides, the 
opportunities are coloured with splendid possibilities " ; or 
" The need for workers is woman's opportunity, and as 
such she recognises and will use it." Again, " The path 
lies open and clear before women, their hour has come to 
establish a rooted and solid foundation for the woman 
worker of the future." And yet again, " Woman has done 
more than any man could have imagined to win this war. 
At the same time she has won a new station for herself." 

Now to me all such talk is the visible sign of the deplor- 
able failure in women's lives. Feminists tell me that the 
breaking up of the individual home with the institutional 
rearing of children will liberate women. By this plan of 
reform they will be free, able to have children and also to 
devote themselves to gainful work. They will gain the 
economic independence for which they are so loudly cry- 
ing. Motherhood will be but a short interruption in the 
professional or industrial career — mother-care a supersti- 
tion of the past. 

What can I say to show how misplaced and how mis- 
chievous is the outlook of those who thus turn away from 
the long experience of the past ? It is not so that the prob- 
lems of the future can be solved. The past gives us proof 
enough that woman's creation, the home, has been her great 
contribution to civilisation. No transitory needs or seem- 
ing personal gains can counterbalance the loss that must 
come to us as a people from woman's neglect of positive 
duties. There has been neglect under industrial conditions. 



THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 177 

Escape was impossible. And in our homes there has been 
urgent need for reform. Here I am in agreement with those 
who discredit the value of the home. I, too, am certain that 
our family and home life, in many directions, have been as 
bad as they could be. A radical change is needed, but I 
hope it will be in the opposite direction from the plan of 
institutional upbringing of the children, and the substitu- 
tion of the communal dwelling-house for the individual 
home. 

I know well, as every woman must know, that the creat- 
ing of the right kind of home is no easy task, but one that 
demands the continuous presence of the mother, with an un- 
ceasing giving of herself in body and in soul. 

And the trouble is that under industrial ideals of rest- 
less discontent and of pulling down the barriers, the ma- 
jority of women have become more and more unfitted for 
efficient home-making. Of one fact I am certain. Things 
cannot go on as before. Here is the reason. The super- 
vision of the home and the maintenance of any true form 
of family life is not compatible with the regular outside 
occupation of married women. Such a duplication of a 
woman's energies can be undertaken only by her using for 
herself and her work the reserve of physical, mental, and 
spiritual energy that should be stored and given to her 
children. To deny this is foolishness. Are women pos- 
sessed of inexhaustible stores of energy.? Do the ordinary 
rules of arithmetic and subtraction not hold good in their 
case "? It would seem so. For women are maintaining that 
to divert so large a proportion of their energies in fresh 
directions will not involve any diminution of the strength 
available for their own affairs. Women are oddly blind. 

Yet modern experience makes it daily more evident that 



178 MOTHERHOOD 

to do any work well requires the employment of one's whole 
time with a complete concentration of attention. Now the 
woman is rare who can put the best of herself both into 
professional work and into her home. One or other 
must suffer^ and since the standard required in the outside 
work is fixed and cannot, as a rule, be lowered, if the posi- 
tion is to be retained, it is the home that is certain to suffer. 
A wife's and a mother's duties cannot be accomplished in 
stray hours snatched from professional work. I speak 
from my own experience. I know that the attempt to do 
this results too often in failure, together with an intolerable 
overstrain. 

The case is much worse with the industrial worker, the 
conditions of whose existence make any kind of home life 
impossible. What, then, is the remedy? The answer that 
will be given by many is the raising of women's wages to 
the same level as the wages of men and the improving of 
the conditions of labour. This will do something, but it 
will not do what I want. Conditions that at bottom are 
continuously wrong need revolutionising, not patching up. 
The change must be a different one, if the ideal of the home 
for which I am pleading is to be saved. There is one way 
out, and only one. The socially wasteful, racially sui- 
cidal, and body and soul withering consequences of the 
working of mothers outside the home must cease. 

I know well the difficulties. Self-centred professional 
women, worldly women who have never found their souls, 
cultured intellectuals chasing the new, dreamers who think 
to reform society — all these and many other women are 
preaching the doctrine that the economic independence of 
woman is essential for her own well-being and equality with 
men. This, as I believe, is a profound mistake that is de- 



THE FAl&ILY AND THE HOME 179 

pendent on industrial values. But on this question I have 
spoken already, and I shall speak again in a later chapter. 

Let us clear our thoughts absolutely, or at least as far as 
we humanly can, from personal standards of value. The 
home is not a bygone contrivance to be given up as useless 
in the march of humanity. Each home that is established in 
love will burn in its children an ineradicable impression that 
no folly from those who have missed its protection will be 
strong enough to destroy. 

The demand that women shall prepare for competition 
with men at all costs will fall into foolishness under wiser 
conditions of life. This must surely be. For women's 
qualities and capacities are different from those of men. 
What is paramount in woman is secondary in man ; her 
dominant qualities are not the same as his, but different. 
And by using her subordinate qualities, as she must do, in 
competition with man, she is up against the dominant qual- 
ities in him and will be beaten by him: on the other hand, 
if woman develops her dominant qualities with a wise edu- 
cation in youth and afterwards by training herself in the 
right performance of her own work, she cannot fail in- 
creasingly to occupy a position of power. And this is 
only another way of saying that woman can achieve her 
highest position only as a woman. As a worker she has 
at all times and in all races occupied a secondary place, as 
woman she is the strongest force in life. We cannot escape 
from nature, and no matter how seemingly urgent it is for 
women to train themselves to act like men on account of 
prevailing economic conditions, it is always wrong at the 
bottom to yield to those conditions : the results will not fail 
to bring evil in the future. 

Let us know where we are going. 



180 MOTHERHOOD 

War conditions have rushed women forward at a racing 
speed on the paths which their desire previously had made 
them seek. If after the coming of peace the desire of 
women is not turned back to family duties and the home, if 
it still seems better and happier to them to do men's work 
than to do their own — then the individual home may be 
swallowed up and replaced by some form of communal 
living. This may be necessary ; it can never be an ideal. 

And further, let us remember that it will not be a step 
forward in progress ; rather will it be a sign of failure, a 
step made necessary by the confusion and conflicts of our 
industrial civilisation. We delude ourselves for want of 
knowledge when we think that we are thus advancing to 
something that is new. The long houses of Iroquois In- 
dians, the joint tenement houses of the Pueblo peoples of 
New Mexico and Arizona, and the village communities com- 
mon among the Panang Highlanders of Sumatra are a 
few instances of the many early experiments in communis- 
tic life. Even Garden Suburbs have been tried by the 
Creek Indians of Georgia, where the natives live together 
in groups of associated dwellings.^ Did I not tell you that 
many of the reforms we are seeking in the belief that they 
are new discoveries, giving proof of our progress, are 
really worn-out forms that are as old as mankind.'^ They 
are even older. I would recall the curious experiments in 
co-operative child-rearing made by the Adelie penguins, 
noted in Chapter V. These pre-human parents would seem 
to be troubled with a strongly developed egoism. Craving 
liberty for play, they pool their families in what I may 
perhaps call " the primordial co-operative nursery scheme " 

1 For a full description of these early experiments in communal 
dwellings see The Age of Mother-Power, pp. 48, 103-131, 151. 



THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 181 

— a plan of child-rearing much advocated by advanced 
feminists. Among the penguins the results are not satisfac- 
tory. True, the penguin mothers have liberty to play with 
the penguin fathers, but the price thereby paid is an ex- 
cessively high mortality among the young birds. ^ 

I recognise that co-operative nurseries and proposals for 
freeing mothers to work outside the home have interest for 
some women, and consequently have their use: they will 
help, no doubt, those women who while desiring and pliys- 
ically fit to bear children, yet have no capacity or wish to 
care for them. There are many such women to-day. I 
regard this as a great evil. 

It has been left to modem intellectual women to fail 
utterly to understand the primary value of the home. Its 
first service is to immerse the child in a protective environ- 
ment of its own. I wish to emphasise these five concluding 
words. They will make clearer why I believe so firmly in 
the patriarchal individual family. Each child needs to feel 
in personal connection with its surroundings — that what is 
nearest to him belongs to him and is his own. And this con- 
nection can be established only by love, and maintained by 
a lasting tradition of duty on the part of both the parents 
bound to each other in service to the child. 

It is often objected that children are happier and health- 
ier away from their parents, and that no conditions could 
possibly be worse than those which exist in countless homes. 
1 know this. But it is no indictment against the home as 
an institution, rather it is an indictment of the kind of home 
and of the mother and the father. 

I can hardly express too strongly my own want of faith 

iSeep. 112. 



18^ MOTHERHOOD 

in the expert child-trainer. I have found always that they 
regard the child, mainly, if not entirely, as something to be 
improved and instructed on a definite plan. The expert 
is never human, and the child has need of all the human 
element that it can get. It has absolute need of a mother 
and of a father. And it is impossible to be parents in the 
complete and right sense apart from the individual home. 
All experience shows us that the home, with its sympathetic 
relationships of mutual affection, cannot be replaced. We 
must insist on conditions of society that will make home life 
possible. The child has to accept the arrangements we make 
as a sacred thing, that is why this question is of such im- 
mense importance. If the matter could be fixed by the will 
of children, I should have no fear. The child has not lost 
the true values of life. 

We have grown careless of the home under the blighting 
effects of industrialism. And the problem of the child is 
much more difficult in the case of modern mothers, who have 
few children and no strong traditions — no fixed standard 
of child training and of home life. Each mother is con- 
tinually making personal experiments, a course of conduct 
that is not only harmful to the individual child, but one 
that must lead to collective confusion. Under such con- 
ditions excessive ardour may be as dangerous as neglect. 
One of the most unfortunate children I have known was an 
idolised only child with most conscientious modern parents, 
who kept a record in many large volumes of its every act 
and every saying. This child was trained out of childhood. 
There may be too much care and attention given by the 
parents as well as too little. 

Motherhood in theory much praised, poetised, and hailed 
as a wonderful thing, often in actual expression is the 



THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 183 

strongest deterrent influence in the life of the child. The 
mother cannot realise the young life that has come from 
her hfe apart from herself. The child is too near to her. 
And it follows from this that her instinct and her love are 
not primarily concerned with the child, rather she is in- 
terested in it chiefly as its mother, that is, the birth-giver 
and possessor of the child. Most mothers bind their chil- 
dren to them much too closely with an egoistic love which is 
the most poisonous form of selfishness. Therefore the 
mother often is the real enemy in the home, the most self- 
centred and conservative member. 

There are, of course, exceptional mothers who have the 
knowledge and the will to avoid such danger; mothers 
who as need arises are strong enough even to push their 
children from them at any personal cost ; who insist on the 
freedom of each child, and see it has the opportunity to 
grow up harmoniously, unhampered and unspoilt, and ac- 
cording to its own nature. But such wise mothers to-day 
are few. And the average mother is like the hen with her 
brood, for ever fretting about her chicks if they venture 
away from her. In such conduct there is a terrible in- 
fringement of the personal rights of the child. Indeed, the 
mother too often enslaves with kindness, a bondage harder 
to bear and even more difficult to escape from than the 
brutal fist of a father. 

Now, this mother-egoism will not be changed easily. It 
is a quality that reaches far back before human parent- 
hood, and is instinctive and not conscious. You will recall 
that I referred to this in Chapter VI,^ where I tried to find 
an explanation. We saw then the manner in which the 
maternal instinct was fixed and strengthened. The mother 
iSee p. 119. 



184. MOTHERHOOD 

became chief parent, as soon as the early stages of mother- 
care were changed from an external to an internal process. 
This strengthened immeasurably the relation of the mother 
to the offspring, who now became an extension of her life. 
Before, the mother's relation to the family was not very 
different from the relation of the father, and was dependent 
on parental sacrifice and the amount of care bestowed. And 
one result of the change was a deepening of egoism — of the 
self-feeling, if I may so call it — in the mother's love, a 
quality which has a much deeper significance that is com- 
monly recognised. In my opinion it is stronger in the love 
of the mother than it ever is in the love of the father. 
Mother-love is not quite the unselfish thing we have been 
accustomed to believe. Even the care which is bestowed so 
lavishly upon the child is often but the outward sign of a 
self -fussing anxiety, and serves no true purpose, but is a 
hindrance to the child's health and happiness. 

I would emphasise this difference between the two 
parents, a difference which may be marked in the father's 
attitude to and affection for the child. It seems to me to 
be of great importance. It is the popular view among 
women who are too idle to think — it saves them the trouble 
of detecting their own faults — that all good women have an 
instinctive understanding of a child and of its needs. This 
is very far from being true. And, indeed, there are good 
grounds for believing — though I own I do not like to 
acknowledge it — that the father's guidance and sympathy 
are of even greater importance to the spiritual well-being 
and happiness of the child than the excessive care and too- 
absorbing love of the mother. 

Here, then, is yet another reason why we must regard 
with profound mistrust the modern movement to break 



THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 185 

away from the tried and fixed institution of the patriarchal 
home. We have seen again and again in our examination 
of the past history of parenthood, that wherever the father 
has been cut off from the family and the duties in caring 
for the young, a deterioration has followed. The develop- 
ment of the individual family is most intimately connected 
with patriarchy. It was under this system that the 
father's position in the family and his right to his chilc^ren 
were established. Nature sees to it that the tie between 
the mother and the child cannot be set aside; the case is 
different with the father, and his position in the family has 
to be made secure in another manner. We need to remem- 
ber the degradation of fatherhood which must be connected 
with any matriarchal programme. And my own faith in 
the patriarchal family-group and the individual home, a 
faith that has only recently been fixed and made strong, is 
based upon this : I am convinced that it is the natural and, 
indeed, the only way of securing the loving care of both 
parents for the upbringing of the children. 

In these days of destruction and of the pulling down of 
barriers, the home is exposed to peculiar danger. Much, 
incalculably much, depends on women's attitude. The 
maternal instinct, or what I would call the mother-sense, 
has surely lost in quality. When I think about this, I feel 
as if I would like to found an order for motherhood. 
Everything to be truly done must become a religion. And 
motherhood should have its ritual no less than faith. There 
is not a single act of duty in the home and in care given 
to the child which the mother may not make into a spiritual 
exercise of her soul. The child should be the mother's 
creation. She is the potter with the power to mould the 
clay, and she should know the rapture of the artist. I 



186 MOTHERHOOD 

want to bring back to motherhood the quality it has 
lost. 

The home awaits a fresh inspiration to turn back and 
hold the desire of women. We have to find again the right 
way. If we get our ideal fixed, it will be translated later 
into the acts of our life. 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IX 

MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 

The false view of woman's being instinctively monogamous — The 
Adam and Eve myth and what it symbolises — Woman's inevitable 
power over man — The beginnings of marriage — The maternal 
form — The personal relationship in marriage dependent on patri- 
archy — Its advantages in fixing the father to the family and the 
service of the home — Polygamy the most ancient form of mar- 
riage under father-right — Polygamy tends to disappear as social 
life develops — Monogamy the permanent form of marriage — Its 
supreme advantage over all other marriage forms — Our prefer- 
ence for monogamy goes beyond laws and religion — It is the best 
way we have yet found of men and women living together — The 
stupidity of profligacy — False intellectual views of life and of 
right and wrong — The sexually masterful lover — Misuse of the 
word love — The function of passion — Women regard love from a 
standpoint of unreality — The Christian view of marriage too ma- 
terialistic and too ascetic — How this has reacted disastrously on 
marriage — The immense disturbing power of the sex emotions — 
We need the limiting safeguards of legal marriage — The ideal of 
faithfulness — The refixing of moral standards. 



CHAPTER IX 

MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 

"It should be remembered that the progress of a nation is stimu- 
lated and the stability of society is increased by the most human- 
ising of all institutions, marriage." — Walter Heape. 

It is commonly asserted — I am not sure whether it is 
really believed — that woman is instinctively monogamous, 
whereas man by his sexual nature is bent towards polj^gamy. 

Now, my experience and desire for truth forces me to 
doubt the reality of this view. I believe that the woman's 
superiority in this matter of constancy, even when it is 
present, is not fundamental to the female character any 
more than it is fundamental to the character of the male, 
and, indeed, I am inclined to think that it is the man who in 
his desire is more bent than woman towards complete faith- 
fulness in the sexual partnership, and if it is the wife who 
more often is apparently and outwardly constant in mar- 
riage than the husband, it is because such conduct is ex- 
pected of her and has been forced upon her by the conven- 
tions of her life. We must see things a little more as they 
are. Compared with woman, man is a comparatively con- 
stant creature, romantic, and not readily moved from his 
love when once it is fixed. I am very certain that I am 
right in this. No man leaves a woman till she sends him 
from her: while she wants him, and lets him feel that she 
wants him, he is hers. 

What is symbolised by the myth representing Eve as first 

189 



190 MOTHERHOOD 

eating of the fruit and then offering it to Adam : the repre- 
sentation of the man in subjection to the woman, the 
bending of his action to her will through his need of her ; 
the active role being here rightly attributed to the woman 
which man in the blindness of his masculine conceit has pre- 
tended to hold himself: this piece of symbolism has left 
deep marks throughout the entire history of marriage and 
is active in all the relationships of the two sexes. 

Maybe woman is what man has made her ; but this is an 
outside thing, a social tag, having reference only to her 
position in the world. Man has not touched woman's soul. 
He cannot. There are many things which a man must learn 
that woman knows from the beginning. To love is one of 
them. Woman teaches man that, and he does not learn 
easily. And it is in these trials, these efforts of his to find 
himself, that woman contributes in so great a measure to 
the making or the marring, of the man. The soul of a man 
passes from the hollow of one woman's hand to the hollow 
of another's. He loves first that extension of himself called 
"mother," and from her he passes on to other less individ- 
ualised relationships. And each woman, with cruel hands 
or with kind, presses deep the imprint of her hold upon his 
plastic clay. 

Yes, it is women who mould the lives of men as it is 
women who give them birth. 

It is strangely difficult to induce in good women to-day a 
practical understanding of their almost limitless power over 
men. Each woman is able to create perpetually in the man 
she loves the qualities she desires ; a power infinitely greater, 
as I believe, than can be ever gained through individual 
self-assertion. 

And if woman feels this power of being the source of 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 191 

creating energy to man (and it belongs to all women, 
although many of them have lost the consciousness of their 
gift), this knowledge is the very centre of her being, the 
flame which feeds life; and she is intensely and supremely 
happy just in so far as she is steeped in sacrifice. I do 
not hope, however, to convince any woman who does not 
know within herself already the gladness of this service 
to man, and I diverge a little from my main subject in 
making these remarks. 

A glance back at the beginnings of marriage should 
teach women a little modesty, for there we see that the 
wife's constancy was directly dependent on the conditions 
of her marriage. Under the maternal form, where the 
husband lived in the home of the wife, her sexual liberty 
was in many cases greater than his. And there is abundant 
proof that full advantage was taken both by unmarried 
and married women of such freedom wherever it was 
allowed.^ Woman is not instinctively inclined to virtue. 
And an inherent desire towards faithfulness in marriage has 
not, I am certain, always acted more strongly in women 
than it has in men ; indeed, I am not sure that the opposite 
is not true. 

The development of the personal relationship in mar- 
riage is intimately dependent on patriarchy. Again I am 
compelled to assert this truth. The establishment of pater- 
nity as a working and acknowledged fact was compara- 
tively a late achievement. Under the conditions of the 
maternal clan, the family was incomplete ; it consisted only 
of the mother and children. This was not a natural con- 
dition, and therefore was not permanent. The new stage 
was ushered in by what may perhaps be called "the social 
1 See The Age of Mother-Power, pp. 127, 173, 178, 177-180. 



19a MOTHERHOOD 

annunciation of paternity." And this led eventually to the 
establishment of marriage in the form in which we under- 
stand it to-day. 

Now for the first time the home was firmly founded. The 
father was the head of the domestic hearth: he was the 
priest of sacrifice at the domestic altar. His ancestors were 
present in the spirit and all the members of the family 
honoured them. And in their presence nothing unclean was 
tolerated. The wife at the moment when, as a bride, she 
crossed the threshold of the home, or was carried across it, 
gave up her own kindred and her own gods. Her husband's 
home was now her home, his gods were her gods."*^ 

So strong an insistence has been made on the evils of 
the wife's subjection to the husband, which arose under 
this system of marriage, that we have lost sight of the en- 
during benefits that from the beginning to the end must be 
connected with it. There is much nonsense talked and 
written about the patriarchal home. Its conditions and 
rules were slowly established for the workable happiness of 
all its members, not, as is too often assumed, arbitrarily 
imposed by the will of men. The duties of the husband 
and the wife were regulated by tradition, and all the service 
in the home was a holy service. By fixing the father to the 
family and securing his protection and toil for the children 
a future stability as well as fuller happiness was made 
possible. I do not see that this advantage could have been 
gained, or can now be maintained, under any other form of 
marriage. Nature herself seems to condemn man in his 
capacity as father. So delicate is the bond which binds 
him to the child compared with the bond which binds the 

1 See Iwan Bloch, Sexual History of our Times, p. 196, who quotes 
from Josef Kohler, 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 193 

mother, so readily can he be pushed outside the circle of the 
family, where, as a member apart, he will inevitably seek 
his own interests and pleasure. 

The most ancient form of marriage under father-right 
was polygamy. Wives and children were a source of wealth 
in primitive communities. As a rule there was a principal 
wife for the procreation of legitimate children, but in addi- 
tion a wealthy man had several subordinate wives or concu- 
bines. Polygamy has always been dependent on the pos- 
session of property. The position of each wife and that of 
her children was fixed by custom, sometimes enforced by 
law ; in no case was a man free from obligations in regard 
to any woman who had "been to him as a wife"; even an 
unfruitful and childless woman could not be cast aside 
without provision being made for her. It is important to 
remember this. However distasteful the idea of legalised 
polygamy must be, and I believe it is distasteful to the 
majority of women and men (and this not from ethical 
reasons, but on account of deep and instinctive desires), it 
is certain that an open recognition of unions outside of 
marriage does prevent an escape from sexual responsibility 
on the part of men. I shall consider this question in fuller 
detail in a later chapter,^ just now we are concerned with 
the development of marriage. 

Out of this patriarchal polygamy monogamic marriage 
gradually arose. The long upward process by which the 
change was accomplished cannot be stated here. One factor 
I would emphasise, as its force has never, I think, been 
sufficiently recognised. Polygamy tends to disappear with 
the development of the conception of fatherhood. As I 
have asserted already, the child is bound to its mother and 
iSee pp. 229-254. 



194j motherhood 

belongs to her whatever the form of marriage, but the same 
force does not act in the case of the father. The child 
belongs to him much more closely under monogamy than 
under polygamy or any other form of marriage. Now men 
do want the possession of their children. Thus a desire to 
have many children by several wives gives place to the de- 
sire to have a closer connection with fewer children born 
of one loved wife. As the marriage relations become more 
firmly established the partners in each union are held more 
closely to each other and to their children, and are pledged 
to greater purity of life. 

There were, of course, many causes that contributed to 
this result. Chastity, first imposed upon the wife because 
she was the property of her husband and might transgress 
this rule only with his permission, came in time to bind men, 
though for a diff^erent reason. For the limits set to the 
sexual freedom of women acted also on them, since they 
were thus deprived of the means of obtaining women for 
themselves, without violating the rights of other men. 

In this and other ways we find that polygamy was 
threatened on many sides. As an accepted and legalised 
form of marriage it tends to disappear with the conditions 
under which social life is developed. Like the maternal 
marriage, and other primitive experiments in sexual asso- 
ciations, polygamy is not a form of marriage that can be 
regarded as a permanent expression of the marriage law: 
that is, it is experimental and suitable to special conditions ; 
it is not a final form, growing up by custom from earlier 
practices, or one which strives for mastery and will not 
tolerate other co-existent forms. On the other hand, 
monogamy has always been characterised by the strongest 
self-assertion, and from the earliest times we find it triumph- 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 195 

ing, and more and more seeking to exclude other forms of 
marriage. 

These facts of the past history of marriage need to be 
considered by those who seek to bring discredit on 
monogamous marriage. Various reformers, too frighten- 
edly concerned with the present shortage of men, increas- 
ing as it will enormously the disproportion between the 
number of the two sexes, have jumped to the conclusion, that 
polygamy is likely to be legalised in the near future. I do 
not believe it. At least, it will not be polygamy under the 
form we have known it in the past. Polygamy has always 
been connected with the property value of woman and is 
dependent upon wealth. For this reason, even if for no 
other, polygamy will not replace monogamous marriages. 
Such a marriage system could not be supported by war- 
impoverished countries. The remedy must be a different 
one, as presently I shall show. 

There is a strange idea among some people that sexual 
happiness can be gained by breaking away from the tradi- 
tional bonds ; it is the visible sign of our confusion as a 
people and the want of happiness in our lives. We should 
not set at naught the experience of the ages. Polygamy 
is an institution which in the growth of civilisation belongs 
only to primitive or non-progressive states. No race or 
nation has ever risen to front rank, or even secondary rank, 
under this marriage system. Our preference for monoga- 
my goes beyond laws and religions. It is that deeply 
rooted thing — a matter of racial experience and desire. 
It is the best way that we have yet found of men and women 
living together. 
. The individual household, where both parents share in 
the common interest of bringing up the children, is the 



196 MOTHERHOOD 

foundation on which monogamy has been built up and on 
which it must stand. If the conditions of the home are 
seriously changed, and the duty of providing and caring 
for the children is taken out of the hands of either or of 
both parents, a change in marriage practice will follow. I 
do not think you can hold the one if you let the other go. 
For Westermarck is right, and children should not be 
regarded as the result of marriage, but rather marriage is 
the result of children. And love between parents implies 
duties and sorrows on each side; without this, love, even 
of the most passionate kind, loses its quality and tends to 
become an ephemeral or even a corrupt thing. 

There is much stupidity in the view of many reformers 
of marriage who fail to see that, however hard it is to live 
faithfully as man and wife, the monogamic ideal of mar- 
riage does so appeal to our emotional nature, that men and 
women are seriously unhappy in trying to destroy it. For- 
tunately it is easier to talk of "love's freedom" than it is 
to act as if it ever could be free. In spite of what ad- 
vanced people say, some feeling of duty will always exist 
as long as it at all hurts us to hurt others. The immorality 
that says, "Do what you desire irrespective of others," is 
as yet beyond most of us. 

Attempts to solve these problems quickly are bound to 
fail. Intellectual revolutionists are, I think, too hopeful 
with regard to what may be done to produce a harmony 
of sexual needs. The optimism that once prevailed in 
economics is being transformed to sexual matters. Once 
people supposed that if ev€ry one followed his own inter- 
ests, a harmony would automatically establish itself in the 
economy of society. Now they tend to say the same about 
sex. They put forward many solutions, but they do not 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 197 

as a rule make use of these solutions, even when they could, 
in their own lives. They say what they do not believe, either 
with conscious insincerity, or because they are ignorant 
of life and are used to trying to get effects with words. 

Intellectual views of life and of what is right and wrong 
always tend to break people into groups, each struggling to 
explain everything according to one theory, built on a 
single principle. And as the result of caring so much for 
one thing people seem quite unable to grasp any facts that 
do not refer to their own one particular reform, they are 
not even able to consider it as part of a world in which 
there is anything else. All the evil in marriage is due to 
too large families and population pressing on the food 
supply, we are told by one class of enthusiasts, while others 
point to men's tyranny over women. Votes for women 
would have a magical effect: men are all bad, say some. 
The father is a parasite, unnecessary except for his share 
in begetting the child ; the mother is the one parent. All 
would be well if legal marriage were abolished and mother- 
hood made free, is the view common among one class of 
reformers. Eugenical breeding and the sterilisation of the 
unfit is the remedy brought forward by others. Many sug- 
gest economic changes and the endowment of motherhood. 

But the matter is not so simple as these reformers 
seem to believe. And I doubt If any outward change is 
really capable of producing the prompt kind of penny-In- 
the-slot results that its supporters claim that it can. The 
complexity of marriage, in particular, the occurrence of 
sexual disharmonies so present and active for misery 
to-day, are Ignored by all Intellectual reformers. It is be- 
cause they have no emotional hold of life as a whole that 
they find it easy to squeeze all life into their magic theories. 



198 MOTHERHOOD 

For myself I can see no sure remedy : and were I asked to 
state one, I could say only: "A few thousand years more 
of development: a growth towards consciousness and a 
fuller understanding of the meaning of life." 

Marriage is not a matter of abstract principles: it will 
always be difficult. If it is anything that can be stated, 
it is a social practice, preserving unity and order amongst 
those who find these qualities of service in the art of living. 
We should humble ourselves to accept the lessons of life, 
then we should be more careful of simple human needs. 

A very slight knowledge of existing marriages is suffi- 
cient to convince even the most optimistic believer that true 
mating is hard. I do not believe that most marriages are 
unhappy, but I do know that only the very few are happy. 
With many partners, and even those who are passionate 
lovers, the attraction of sex always seems to fall short of its 
end ; it draws the two together in a momentary self-f orget- 
fulness, but for the rest it seems rather to widen their sep- 
arateness; they are secret to one another in everything, 
united only in the sexual embrace. 

And the man who has not found his way already to the 
soul of a woman by some other means, will not do so 
through the channels of sex. For a woman wants to be 
loved for what she is, not for what the man wants from her. 
And for this reason those men who have in them no faculty 
for friendship will be likely always to meet with coldness on 
the part of their wives in response to their continued 
ardour. Such men do not understand that despite all their 
sexual proneness they are psychologically impotent. 

The word love is used in so general and indiscriminate a 
way to denote sometimes the most transitory impulse, and 
sometimes the most intimate and profound feeling, that a 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 199 

mass of misunderstanding arises. Love comes from the 
senses as well as from the soul, and the one emotion often 
is mistaken for the other. And what this serves to bring 
home to us is the dualism inherent in the marriages of a 
civilised age, in which the element of sexual masterfulness, 
being a natural expression of masculinity, is unintentionally 
active, a survival of very primitive instincts, which to-day 
struggle for mastery with newer emotions and sympathy, 
flaring up in a late expession to justify the need for sexual 
contrast. 

It is, however, very necessary for me to guard against 
my meaning being mistaken, in case I should be thought 
to be supporting the view that men are less capable than 
women are of unselfish love, and feel only passion. I do not 
understand such a distinction. Possibly it is true that affec- 
tion can exist without passion, though if by "passion" sex- 
feeling is meant, it certainly is not true; and assuredly 
passion is the great and important part of love — nay, 
rather, it is Love itself. 

The truth is this : Women have been taught for genera- 
tions to look on love from a standpoint of unreality, and 
when in marriage they are forced to face some great fact 
in life, they are shocked and disillusioned. It is useless for 
women to go on acting as if sex desire was something of 
which nice people ought to be ashamed. Marriage is 
really a contract in which the woman undertakes certain 
sexual duties as well as the man, and the woman has the 
advantage, for she possesses all that the man most wants. 

We may not safely ask too much or too little from mar- 
riage or take too high or too low a view of it. But the 
Christian view of the nature of marriage is at once too 
materialistic and too ascetic. The ancient world looked on 



mo MOTHERHOOD 

marriage as a religious duty. "To be mothers were women 
created, and to be fathers men." Christianity permitted 
marriage, but only as a necessary evil against the tempta- 
tions of lust. "It is better to marry than to burn." 

This is, of course, a long past story. But such hateful 
view of marriage has left in every Christian land an inher- 
itance of evil. The sexual life was considered impure and 
a concession to the lower nature in man ; true purity of life 
was to be attained only in celibacy. Small wonder that 
marriage, thus regarded as an escape from worse evil and 
a cover to laxity of sexual conduct, is often so immoral. 
We see at once that the main evil of this gross misunder- 
standing of love must have fallen upon women. The woman 
was there just to keep the man in condition and from sin. 
I can hardly over-estimate the disastrous consequences both 
to marriage and to women of this unholy view of the sexual 
relationship. 

The false glorification of asceticism, which denies the 
true nature of marriage while at the same time professedly 
regarding marriage as a sacrament, has involved a corre- 
sponding and unhealthy classifying of love into higher and 
lower, the spiritual and the physical ; and the action of this 
double standard in the sexual life has led, on the one side, 
to the setting up of a theoretical ideal of conduct which, 
as few are able to follow it, tends to become an empty 
form, and this, on the other side, has led to a hidden laxity, 
within marriage and outside it. 

I have emphasised this question of the unholy ascetic view 
of marriage because of its unspeakable evil, not only for 
women, but for the waste it entails to the race. It is the 
basis of most of the failures and diseases in our sexual life. 
As you know, our moral and religious systems regard the 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 201 

body as the prison of the soul, and pay consequently no 
attention whatever to the body from the moral point of 
view. I desire a regeneration of all the instincts of the 
body through consciousness. I desire this much more for 
the health and happiness of women themselves than I do for 
the enjoyment of men. 

But it is not going to be easy. The education of the 
senses is quite a new thing, and it is not even allowed to most 
women to possess them. The principle of "re-discovery" 
will have to be begun. We must teach woman that she 
wants love for herself ; the man must not claim it from her 
as a right he has bought by marriage. 

Most women and some men do not realise (at least, they 
do not openly acknowledge) the immense disturbing power 
of sex and the claims the sexual life makes at some time 
on us all. To hear many people talk you would think it 
were possible to free ourselves at will of all those troubles 
and prejudices of sex that are our heritage from an un- 
countable past. Love is something fiercer than hand- 
holding in the darkness of the cinema, or moon-gazing in 
the parks. 

In fear we try to keep the blinds down so that love may 
be decently obscured. Yet how can we ever begin to under- 
stand and deal with these problems of sex unless we will 
admit all the instincts and tendencies which ever lead us 
backwards to the more elemental phases of life.'^ The deep- 
est of the emotions is sex, and its action, like all the emo- 
tions that are fundamental, may be traced into a thousand 
bye-paths of the ordinary experience of each of us; it 
exercises its influence on every period of our development, 
and works subconsciously to control our actions in endless 
ways that we refuse to acknowledge. 



20g MOTHERHOOD 

Hence the conflicts which manifest themselves so 
strangely and so fiercely in our lives. The emotional self 
refuses at times to be controlled by the reason self. Re- 
straint cannot do much, and indeed, often brings deeper 
evil. For our unconscious selves are stronger than all the 
pretences we have set up by our conscious wills, either as 
individuals to encourage our own deceit or collectively as a 
nation in the hope of controlling conduct. 

This is why so much that is said to-day about sexual 
conduct is so foolish. The real question is not what people 
ought to do, but what they actually do and want to do, 
and, therefore, are likely to go on doing. It is these facts 
that the reformers of marriage almost always fail to face. 

Having said this much, you will readily understand why 
I regard as necessary for the morality of marriage some 
public recognition of the relationship, and some accepted 
standard of conduct in it. We cannot, remembering the 
inherent defectiveness of our wills, safely hesitate and 
experiment in the liberties we can allow and the limits we 
must set to a force so strong as sexual love. Still less can 
we allow to be done in secret and in shameful darkness 
things that we will not face in the light. The unregulated 
union in any form does not seem to me to be practicable. 
Our sexual relationships are, or ought to be, so hedged 
about by duties, obligations, and consequences, that sexual 
conduct can never be considered as a personal question, 
and any society that permits such a view, whether openly 
acknowledged or secretly accepted, opens the way to real 
immorality and great unhappiness. 

Not all who cry "It is useless," can do without the limit- 
ing safeguards of legal marriage. We still feel the ser- 
pent's sting of jealousy, and the old questions, "Where do 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 203 

you come from?" "What have you been doing to-night?" 
"Who handled your body till daytime, while I watched and 
wept?" "In what bed did you lie and w^hom did you 
gladden with your smile?" are still felt in the heart, even 
if not uttered by the lips, of the most advanced and eman- 
cipated husbands and wives. Por often we are forced into 
acts over which reason has no control. And our sex judg- 
ments are not merely moral, not just questions of under- 
standing and forgiving, but also physical questions of the 
nerves, of the blood, of the fiercest instinct. 

And marriage, I say, the old patriarchal marriage that 
the advanced people and the idealists alike scojff at, is 
necessary for most of us — it does through its checking in- 
fluence help us, and, by setting clear limits and prescribing 
a fixed code of conduct, it certainly hinders, if it cannot 
destroy, irregular manifestations of love. Moreover it 
does, by its ideal of faithfulness and duty to one mate, turn 
the imagination to desire fidelity. It is not so much that we 
could not love others, but that we shall not want to do so. 
Our desire is the first necessity: all else will follow. It is 
the seed of everything that can grow up in marriage: it is 
the true magic power. And this desire is always active, 
every real marriage is a continual renewing of interest 
through love, and, if the partners are not interested in each 
other, they will seek for something else. 

If we try to be faithful to one another in marriage, 
instead of outside of it, there will be for most of us a 
greater chance of enduring happiness than is likely under 
conditions where each individual couple sets up a standard 
of sexual conduct for themselves. 

Our minds to-day are certainly in conflict, and, in my 
opinion, it will be impossible to make much change in all 



£04* MOTHERHOOD 

that is wrong without the refixing of moral standards. 
There is no kind of unity in our desires: we do not know 
what we want. We have broken down without building up. 
And when traditional rules for conduct are absent there 
must be confusion. For the existence of many standards, 
each with its own theory of what is good, is an evil which 
opens a clear way for license and unhappiness. 

As I have tried to show, the two great faults of the 
modern reform movements connected with marriage and 
sexual conduct are their instability and externality. These 
faults are the direct result of too much intellectualism and 
too much individualism. We have gone astray because we 
have thought chiefly of our own immediate wants and been 
over eager for experience, without considering what the 
result of our action must be to others in the future. We 
have had no clear vision of evil and good. I feel almost 
that a mistaken vision — so long as it was a vision common 
to us all — would be better than no vision at all, which really 
is the result when each one of us gazes at our own particu- 
lar star. This has been the blasting modern disease. And 
our inability to set up plain standards of right and wrong, 
with no ideals to strive after, has left vacant room for 
false ideals. 

For I hold that the broad direction of our conduct follows 
straight from our faith. To beheve in marriage is to want 
to do right in marriage. Then do we fail, and our own 
union comes to disaster, it will be a personal failure, not 
a collective failure ; we shall blame ourselves, not the insti- 
tution of marriage. And to have this faith in marriage as 
a people — not as a law imposed upon us, but a necessary 
binding that we accept of our own wills — ^will bring us 
again to be unified by a comprehending idea : an ideal of 



MONOGAMOUlS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 205 

purpose and duty to one another and among us all in our 
sexual conduct, and in this way we shall be helped in right- 
doing. Carried onwards by a ruling motive, we shall find 
unity of desire, with its value to life of an absolute 
standard. It is for this reason I care so deeply that the 
monogamic ideal of marriage — ^the living faithfully to one 
mate in thought and deed — should be held sacred by us all : 
held sacred, however greatly we may fail as individuals to 
attain to this ideal. Our failures in faithful living may 
bring disaster to ourselves. But the institution of marriage 
can be hurt much more by the fading and loss of our belief 
in the duty of faithfulness, 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER X 

MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN ! A CONTINUATION 

OF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, WITH SOME REMARKS 

ON THE CHARACTER OF WOMAN 

Some men and women unfitted for faithful mating — The enforced 
continuance of an unreal marriage — This leads to immorality — 
The real controlling power in marriage is our desire — The need 
for honourable divorce — The immorality present in many mar- 
riages — We accept monogamy but tolerate hidden extra-conjugal 
relationships — This worse than regulated polygamy — The neces- 
sity of distinguishing between sex passion and the desire for a 
child — All women do not want to be mothers — The sins that fol- 
low the binding of such women in the bonds of monogamous 
marriage — The child born against the will of its mother — A 
contrast between two types of women — The siren woman and the 
maternal woman — An attempt to explain such difference — The 
pleasure factor in sex — Our ignorance in all matters relating to 
sex — An instance of the siren type of woman as a mother, 



CHAPTER X 

MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN: A CONTINUATION OF 

THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, WITH SOME REMARKS 

ON THE CHARACTER OF WOMAN 

"That the first decade of the child life of all mankind age after 
age passes continuously through the hands of woman seemed to 
him one of the most significant facts in the whole range of human 
afi^airs." — Life and Letters of Edward Thring. 

I TRUST from what I have said already on marriage in 
the previous chapter that two things have been made plain : 
on the one side, my own strong faith in monogamous 
marriage as the most practical and happiest form of asso- 
ciation for the great majority of women and men ; and m}'^ 
further opinion that sexual relationships must be regulated 
by law. I am, however, deeply conscious of the ignomin- 
ious conditions of many marriages, and thus, on the other 
side, I am forced to the opinion that for the whole of sexual 
conduct there cannot safely be one only rule. I know well 
there will always be exceptions: men and also women who 
are unfitted for faithful mating. It is this fact we do not 
face that makes the problem so difficult to solve at all and 
to solve completely impossible. 

Regarding companionship as essential in any true union, 
the reform most likely to produce a balance of good in 
marriage is such an alteration in the basis of marriage and 
increased spirituality in the way of conceiving it as will 
make incompatibility of temperament, resulting in inability 

209 



210 MOTHERHOOD 

to maintain companionship, justify honourable divorce. 
To consider sexual infidelity as the only valid ground for 
divorce is to take a limited and wrong view of marriage. 
Spiritual unfaithfulness may be a far greater sin, and one 
bringing much deeper unhappiness in marriage, than 
sexual unfaithfulness. 

It may seem that this view is a contradiction of what I 
have said of the enduring character of marriage. I do not 
think so. No marriage that should be maintained will ever 
be broken by making divorce easy. It will add nothing to 
the sanctity of marriage to force those who are really un- 
mated to remain mated by law. One marvels at the folly 
of such a view. I want people to enter into marriage and 
to remain in it, because they want to be there, not because 
they are forced.^ 

For I do believe that the great majority of women and 
men do really desire to live faithfully with one mate. Di- 
vided allegiance is possible only where love is of a slight 
character. If it is absorbing it cannot be diffuse, and the 
more diffuse it is the less the partners in such a union will 
be able to give or take from one another. It is impossible 
to be lovers and partners in the fullest and most human 
sense in several unions. 

The real controlling power in marriage is our desire, 
though our acts may be, and usually are, directed as well 
by habit and tradition—a sort of conscience and feeling for 
the judgment of others. And divorce can never be easy 
while it at all hurts us to hurt one another, 

1 The reader is referred to the chapter on "Divorce" in The Truth 
about Woman, pp. 352-359. I may, perhaps, also state my intention 
of devoting my next book entirely to the urgent question of Divorce 
Reform. For this reason I have said very little about the subject 
in this work. 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 211 

I must, however, reaffirm my opinion that sexual rela- 
tionships, whether within marriage or outside of it, whether 
legal or free, can never safely be unregulated, and will 
always be a difficult experiment. And experience has forced 
on me the knowledge that the most passionate union is often 
the one most likely to end in disaster. For Buckle is not 
far from right when he says we accumulate knowledge, but 
do not progress in morals, which depend on the unaltered 
heart of man. 

Some characters are manifestly and essentially unfaith- 
ful, self-seeking, and regardless of the happiness of others 
in love and in all the affairs of life. Others again act un- 
faithfully through weakness or haste, or through the mis- 
fortune of circumstances. The mistake with many of these 
people is that they ever bind themselves in permanent unions. 
We should not condemn or deal harshly with them, for by 
so doing we drive them to undertake obligations which they 
do not, because they cannot, fulfil. In my opinion, it is 
foolishness to pretend that for the whole of sexual conduct 
there can ever be one fixed rule. We shall have more moral- 
ity, not less, if we accept this. 

It is for this reason that I am altogether persuaded of 
the need of much greater facilities of divorce than exist 
at present : divorce on the ground of mutual consent, and 
based on inability through any cause to maintain true part- 
nership in marriage. 

There are some men and also women unsuited for mar- 
riage and quite undesirable as life-partners ; they are not, 
however, undesirable because of the legal bond, but because 
of certain qualities which as individuals they possess. And 
this wider facility of divorce would do very much to lessen 
individual hardships, and moreover it would cleanse, in a 



m2 MOTHERHOOD 

way not sufficiently recognised, the immorality which is 
present in many unions. Marriage, with its fixed duties and 
the restrictions it does impose, in particular, upon the 
woman, will always appear to some a bondage from which 
they will seek the quickest way of escape. If no honour- 
able way is allowed to them, they will take a dishonourable 
course. This may be deplored, it cannot (at any rate un- 
der existing conditions of character and public opinion) be 
helped, and nothing but evil can follow by pretending it is 
not so. 

Thus we find that the difficulty of divorce is the strongest 
factor that brings disgrace and immorality into marriage. 

This matter of honourable divorce is, however, one only 
of the almost countless questions in the tangle of considera- 
tions involved in the difficult matter of any attempt to 
change sexual conduct. More important, perhaps, is the 
great disproportion between the two sexes in a country that 
calls itself and tries to be monogamous. In our society, 
where so many conditions and causes have corresponded to 
make marriage more and more difficult, there are a very 
large number of women and also some men, and will be for 
a long time, who, from necessity rather than from choice, 
have to seek to satisfy their sex needs and to find love in 
the best way that they can. I do not see that we can or 
ought to condemn without fuller knowledge than as a rule 
we can have, these breaches of the prohibitions and laws of 
marriage : I am very certain that no good can be gained by 
branding those who commit them as sinners. Rather the 
conditions that give rise to such conduct must be openly 
faced and wherever possible dealt with. War, acting as it 
must inevitably do in increasing these evils and making mar- 
riage more difficult for many women, perhaps will bring 



MONOGAMOirS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 213 

us to do this. Changes in our laws may be forced upon our 
acceptance. We shall have to be more careful to protect 
life and to prevent waste of the powers of life. We cannot, 
therefore, I think, go on, in this question of the sex needs 
that are not satisfied in marriage, with the old game of 
pretence, that no irregular conduct need be considered as 
long as it can be hidden, or at least not publicly 
acknowledged. 

But of sexual relationships outside of marriage I shall 
speak in a separate chapter.^ The question is too urgent 
to be dealt with hastily. I shall state what seems to me 
can be done to regulate these unlegalised unions so as to 
free them, as far as this is possible, from the secrecy and 
shamefulness which acts, I am certain, as the strongest fac- 
tor in th^ distress and evil w^hich they do almost inevitably 
bring, both to the individuals who enter into them and to 
the society which tolerates, but does nothing to protect, 
them. 

In the past, we have failed sufficiently to recognise the 
immorality which is present in many marriages. Monog- 
amy has in reality never been attained either by ancient 
civilisations or in the modern world. Thus, while accepting 
monogamy, we tolerate extra conjugal relationships, which 
can be regarded only as a hidden polygamy, and, indeed, 
from one practical point of view, it is even worse in its re- 
sults than a well-understood and regulated polygamy, as 
these fugitive unions, being unrecognised, carry with them 
no obligations. And the action of this double standard of 
sexual morality, with its concealed element of lying hypoc- 
risy, has brought, and rightly brought, into discredit legal 
monogamous marriage ; it has led on the one side to the 
iSee pp. 229-254. 



214 MOTHERHOOD 

setting up of an ideal of marriage conduct which, as many 
in fact actually do not follow it, tends to become an out- 
ward form, and this on the other side leads to a concealed 
laxity in practice, which results only too frequently in ir- 
responsible unions, hidden diseases and blasted motherhood, 
the most terrible of the evils in our disordered sexual life 
of to-day. Facts of daily observation may not be shuffled 
out of observation by any hypocrisy. They must be faced 
and dealt with. 

The question becomes clearer, if we consider that some 
people, men as well as women, have a great desire for chil- 
dren; or possibly as the desire is not always consciously 
recognised, it would be truer to say that with them the sex- 
ual impulse is more deeply rooted. I mean, though it is 
very difficult in words to express this, that erotic desire is 
less personally overmastering, that they are in truer rela- 
tion with the race — one link in the long chain of the genera- 
tions. This being so, the getting of a child is the ultimate, 
though rarely, I think, the conscious, satisfaction of sex ; 
while for others — and this is true of some women quite as 
much as it is true of many men — sexual relations are in 
themselves the final gratification of love. Children may 
come, but they are born because of the operation of this 
strictly personal impulse or need of the parents. 

It is, I think, very necessary to distinguish between sex- 
passion and the desire for a child; they are not the same, 
though, of course, the one impulse may be, and is as a 
rule, involved in the other. We need more clear thinking 
and frank speaking on the two elements in the reproduc- 
tive act. This is a human problem, one that belongs to 
mankind alone; moreover, it has greatly increased among 
civilised races, and is likely to become more, and not less, 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 215 

difficult with the advance of time. Animals have sex-pas- 
sion, which is neither love as we feel it nor lust ; with them, 
as also in some degree with most primitive peoples, this pas- 
sion is seasonal, not alwaj^s active, and is more or less 
closely connected with the obtaining of offspring. Far 
different and much more complicated are the conditions 
of love among us to-day. Men and women have a con- 
tinuous desire for love, with sex-passion as its outward ex- 
pression and children for its efflorescence. They also have 
lust, which is a comparatively new expression,^ at least, 
that is my opinion as to what is true of the majority among 
us. I do not use the word "lust" here in any sense of con- 
tempt, but to express strong and conscious sex-passion, 
seeking its own satisfaction without connection with any 
possible result in a child. Then at a much lower level 
there is lust-desire without love, or clothed merely in a root- 
less ephemeral mimicry of passion — a libertinage having no 
law but curiosity in self-indulgence. And all passion is a 
very different thing from the serene considerations which, 
according to the Prayer Book, cause men and women to 
marry. 

Now, it is because of what sex-passion has come to be 
among us — its variety in desire and in result — that we are 
far more remote than pre-human and primitive parents 
from having marriage and parenthood settled so as to 
meet the desires and sex-needs of every one, as would be 
easily possible if the reproductive act could be regarded as 
being solely, or even chiefly, connected with the birth of 
children. 

I do not know if I have made my meaning perfectly 
clear, but what I wish to insist upon is this : It is necessary 

1 See p. 347. 



216 MOTHERHOOD 

in all questions and judgments connected with marriage to 
consider the presence or absence in the partners of the wish 
to produce and possess a child. I propose to deal briefly 
with this question in relation to the character of women. 

It is commonly asserted that the normal woman desires 
to be a mother. Now, this may be true, but what is for- 
gotten is that all women are not normal, and thus there are 
many who not only have no desire to become mothers, but 
exceedingly dislike the idea of bearing children. You may 
say this is an unnatural condition; but such a use of the 
word "unnatural" is surely wrong; nothing is "natural" 
to the man or woman save what they have evolved, and by 
that I mean what they have come to desire to be ; and my 
contention is that we have evolved a type of woman un- 
suited for motherhood because she does not desire it, and 
for such a woman it is "unnatural" to be a mother. Of 
course this turning away from motherhood is in numerous 
cases the result of wrong education, and is dependent on 
the weakened constitutions and shaken nerves of women, 
which forces them to fear the pains of child-birth, as well 
as inducing an increasing dislike to the restrictions and 
duties that the care of children will entail. These causes 
are strong to-day ; doubtless they hold back many women 
from becoming mothers, but I do not think that they take 
us very far to the deeper hidden causes which are also pres- 
ent among us, nor can they be regarded as essential factors 
in deciding the question as to which wpmen should be 
mothers. There is something acting much more strongly, 
a cause which must be sought in the character of woman 
herself, and one which, unlike those dependent on outside 
conditions, cannot, I think, be altered. You see, I regard 
the true instinct for motherhood as a quality directing all 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 217 

expression, something deep-seated in the nature, and there- 
fore a quality that cannot be added to a character if the 
woman docs not possess it. 

And because I believe this, I regard any effort to force 
maternity, even as an ideal, upon all women as a great 
wrong. We do not expect all men to desire to be fathers, 
we must cease to expect all women to desire to become 
mothers. For by so doing we cause more evil than we know. 
And the hurt is not borne by the mother alone. The child 
born against the will of its mother must tend also to be 
without will ; too weak to bear well the stress and struggle 
of life. This is no fanciful statement. I believe it can be 
proved b}^ any one, with sufficient knowledge, who takes 
the trouble to investigate the facts. The child who is 
born through the physical mastery of the father and the 
physical subserviency of its mother, and against her desire, 
does pay the penalty in a heritage which lacks stability and 
harmony in character. 

One of the many hypocrisies of our society to-day is the 
condemnation, still maintained by many who do not under- 
stand, of the use of the many safe artificial preventatives 
to conception. The mother must be given more control 
over the birth of her children. Personally I have not a 
strong feeling against the procuring of abortion, but per- 
haps the forbidding of it is necessary as a fence around 
the reverence for human life ; but the prevention of birth is 
a different matter. And certainly each woman must be 
free to make her own choice as to whether she bears children 
or does not bear them; no man, and still more no social or 
moral compulsion, may- safely decide this matter for her ; 
she must give life gladly to be able to give it well. 

Nor must we look with disfavour on those women who 



218 MOTHERHOOD 

desire to avoid motherhood and its duties, or regard them 
as "unnatural" — ^this word, as I have just said, is used far 
too carelessly. It were well to remember that the parental 
instinct is not fixed and is dependent on causes that very 
few of us understand, that it is not present in all women 
any more than the fighting instinct is present in all men. 
A vast amount of stupid confusion arises from our fail- 
ing to accept the wide diversity in women's temperaments 
and characters in relation to this question of motherhood. 
Between the more usual type of woman, whose deepest de- 
sire and strongest instincts are fixed in motherhood, and 
the woman at the other extreme to whom even the thought 
of maternity is a terror, there are a wide range of inter- 
mediate types — women able to love and even in some re- 
spects markedly feminine, but with weak maternal feeling. 
Such diversity in the family qualities has always existed. 
We have seen in our past study of the family that the ma- 
ternal instincts may be overlaid and even destroyed, being 
replaced by others more clearly masculine. Examples of 
this are found in the insect world, and striking examples 
among fishes and reptiles, where the father is the true par- 
ent and undertakes all duties connected with the young. 
The case of the phalaropes furnished us with a further 
remarkable instance of this reversal in the characters of 
the two sexes. Things are not quite as dramatic, perhaps, 
in the human world, but they are more fateful, more sig- 
nificant. And such changes in the expression of the emo- 
tions, dependent as they would seem to be on changes in 
the sexual character, can be effected, for every individual 
of one sex has in him or her the qualities of the other sex 
in a less degree ; and any special circumstance or alteration 
in the conditions of life which acts on an individual or 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 219 

group of individuals in an opposite direction from the or- 
dinary, may succeed in modifying and, in some cases, trans- 
forming the deep impulses of sex.^ 

I do not wish to follow this question here. It is, how- 
ever, widely evident that in the society we have evolved to- 
day there are many women in whom, what I may perhaps 
call, an atrophy of the maternal instincts has taken place. 
This may be regretted, it cannot wisely be blamed, fpr it 
forms no solution of the problem thus to mark down for 
blame. There is one way, and one way only, as far as I 
can see, whereby this great evil that has happened and still 
is taking place might be stayed. The maternal women, 
the mother type, should be the only women to be mothers ; 
which is, of course, the same thing as saying that every 
child should be born of passionate desire. 

But this is not so simple in practice as at first sight it 
seems ; it carries with it first the demand that women must 
be given the knowledge and means to prevent the concep- 
tion of every undesired child ; and second, and even more 
important, that all girls should be educated to understand 
something at least of their sexual nature so that they may 
know their own need and strongest instincts ; then, does 
their desire turn towards motherhood, they will be better 
able to choose as the father of their children men who de- 
sire to be fathers as they desire to be mothers, so that to- 
gether they may decide the number of children they will 
bring into the world and under what conditions. That is 
the only kind of motherhood that will endure. 

I am prepared for an objection here. I shall be told 

that a woman, much less a girl, does not know whether she 

1 The reader is referred to the chapter on "Reproductive Differ- 
ences" in an instructive little book, Preparation for Marriage, by 
Walter Heape. 



220 MOTHERHOOD 

wants a child until she bears one ; that it is then her ma- 
ternal instinct will develop. I do not believe it. I find this 
is the opinion of men and of women who have failed to 
think straight; both judge in these matters too arbitrarily 
and with too little understanding. They forget how dif- 
ficult it has been, and still is, for any one of my sex to be 
at all sexually truthful. Considering the folly of the edu- 
cation we give to girls, there is little reliance to be placed 
on what any woman says about sex. What we need most of 
all is the liberation of women's instincts through education 
in consciousness. Perhaps, then, we shall cease to expect 
the impossible, by which I mean we shall not hope to make 
good mothers of the girls who have no deep instinct to 
love children. I know, of course, that the girl who before 
marriage does not love children, may, and as a rule will, love 
her own child: but I am certain that in nine cases out of 
every ten she will do so in the wrong way ; the child will be 
cherished only as a possession of herself, an extension of 
her own egoism, which is very far indeed from what I hold 
as the self -giving character of the mother-woman. Here is 
one reason why good motherhood is so rare. 

One source of great error arises because of the hypocrisy 
that society still forces upon women in all questions of sex, 
and in particular on this matter of their wanting, or not 
wanting, to be mothers. You see, the desire for a child is 
allowed to them, but it is not yet allowed to them to desire 
love without the child. We are a strange people. And this 
belief, instilled into us by puritanism and a religion which 
denies simple human needs, that sex enjoyment is immoral 
without the purpose of procreation, has been a most de- 
grading influence. It has done great harm. It has 
poisoned the lives of thousands of women and men ; but the 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 221 

greatest of the evils it has wrought is that, under its influ- 
ence, countless children have been born, both in marriage 
and outside of it, against the will of their mothers. Until 
it is openly recognised that women are not alike in their 
sexual natures any more than they are alike in their out- 
ward appearance, that they cannot all be classed together 
as the mother-sex, this evil cannot be changed ; the old 
hypocrisy will continue and children will verily be born 
in sin, for they will be born without the mother's desire, 
and for this the race must pay the penalty. 

We have, I am sure, to face the fact of the general oc- 
currence among us of women of the siren type; they are 
the exact opposite to the mother type. With them the 
"pleasure factor"-^ in the sexual act is the aim and end of 
love: this results, as it seems to me, in an intensified ego- 
ism, which has far-reaching effects first in the woman's at- 
titude to the man, as later in her attitude to her children. 
The siren woman is the property of all men, or rather it 
would be much nearer to the truth to say that all men are 
her property. I do not think such a woman can ever re- 
main satisfied with one mate, though circumstances may 
hold her apparently faithful to her marriage vows. She is 
quite unsuited for monogamous marriage, unless, indeed, 
she finds a man of a similar type whom she has perpetually 
to reconquer. Even then there must be variety in each con- 
quest to provide the excitement necessary with both to 
stimulate love. Such a woman, as, of course, also the man, 
is always unsuited for the selfless sacrifices of parenthood. 
She is the natural prostitute, who absorbs everything in sex 
for her own desire. 

The case is quite diff'erent with the mother type, and 
iSee p. 339. 



2£2 MOTHERHOOD 

her relation to the man is not the same ; true, she also seeks 
and uses the man, the difference is not here. Woman is 
better equipped for the sex-battle than is man. There is 
nothing wrong in this. I hold that a woman should be 
able to take the man she loves as her right ; she does take 
him now, but in ways that too often should make both 
herself and him ashamed. The mother-woman exercises 
her right of choice as the representative of Nature. She 
is the fount of the race, she seeks the man as her helper 
and because he will give life to the child she desires. Such 
a woman is not always faithful in marriage, but she wishes 
to be so, and she will be faithful in actual fact, if she is 
fortunate and finds in her lover the fitting father she seeks 
unconsciously for her children. 

Of course, this is a purely arbitrary classification; the 
two types of character mingle in most women. There are 
traces of the siren in every woman, and no woman — though 
I am less certain here — is entirely devoid of the maternal 
instinct. 

It is very difficult to know the truth. But it seems to 
me that, when from any cause the pleasure factor in sex 
becomes secretly over-accentuated, as it may so easily do 
under conditions where full sex expression is denied to 
many women, the normal sexual impulses are in some 
cases weakened or even atrophied through disuse, while in 
others satisfaction is gained in secret erotic practice, and 
by so doing the character and these deep impulses receive 
a twist in an unhealthy direction, leading or at least tend- 
ing to an inflaming of the egoistical desires, which, if long 
continued, will increase to crowd out, like an overgrowth of 
some poisonous weed, the more tender plant of the parental 
instinct. While certainly not presuming to speak with au- 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 223 

thority on so difficult a subject, I think that the sugges- 
tion I have made may possibly afford an explanation of 
the poverty of the mother instinct in some women com- 
pared with its richness in other women. I plead for a 
patient recognition of the fact that in all these deep mat- 
ters relating to sex we are still very ignorant. 

Let me now give an example that quite recently came 
under my notice, of a woman who, though a mother, was 
without any glimmering flicker of maternal feeling. It 
seems to me to be worth recording as being the most strik- 
ing case I have met of the siren type of woman, who, if 
I am right, is occupying a wrong place in any monog- 
amous marriage. Facts speak more forcibly than any 
mere statements. 

In a boarding-house at which I was staying there was 
a young and beautiful mother. She had borne seven chil- 
dren, of whom the two youngest were with her, a boy of 
about five and a baby a year old. She had with her also a 
young niece of about seven years of age. They were 
healthy and, I should judge, charming children. The 
mother apparently had no love for them whatever. It was 
a most extraordinary case. Physically this woman was 
fitted to bear children, but she was clearly without any 
capacity for caring for them. She reminded me of the 
phalarope mothers, who seek love adventures and leave 
the charge of their children to the fathers. In this case 
the father was not present : the guardian of the baby was 
the niece. I never saw a more patient worker than this tiny 
child. I do not know whether it was fear held her to her 
task. She did not play: all day she tended, and worked, 
and watched. Sometimes she was assisted by the tiny boy, 
her cousin. 



224 MOTHERHOOD 

Here is one out of many conversations that I chanced to 
overhear. 

Harry, the boy, called to his cousin — 

"Susie, I have washed baby's napkins, what shall I do 
now?" 

She answered, "Begin to get the food ready; I will 
come in a minute to boil the milk." 

This is no exaggeration, I state exactly what I heard. 

Now, it is no use shrieking out that this woman's conduct 
is unnatural and a libel on motherhood. If the maternal 
instinct was a fixed instinct and bore good fruit only, this 
might be done. The objection to the wrong kind of 
women being mothers is precisely that it inevitably pro- 
duces some such results. This woman simply followed the 
promptings of her own desires : the difference was that she 
did it much more frankly than is usual. She employed the 
days in playing croquet and tennis and in flirting with any 
available male. I do not think she knew she was not a 
good mother. At intervals, when .she remembered, she 
scolded the children ; but when she forgot them, which was 
frequently, she left them alone. 

Often I talked with her, as she interested me very 
strongly. I wished that I could have known her early his- 
tory, and especially some details of her sexual life. I could 
but guess, still I do not think I was mistaken. She told 
me quite frankly that she did not like children, though she 
added (clearl}', though quite unconsciously, speaking con- 
ventionally), "Of course, I love my own children." Then 
(lapsing again into truth) she went on bewailing the 
length of the school holidays (the little boy and the girl 
were both at boarding-school) and her present position of 
being without a nurse to look after the baby. On the oc- 



MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN 225 

casion of another conversation she told me that she did not 
care for men. I answered, "Probably not, but you like 
them to care for you." She laughed and seemed pleased, 
and asked me how I knew this. 

Now, this woman was to me a most interesting study. A 
friend who was staying with me at the time blamed her 
very severely. I think this was unfair. What was clear to 
me was that life was demanding from this woman what she 
could not give. She was strongly sensual without being 
passionate; she was probably philoprogenitive or she 
would not have had so many children ; but she was not at 
all maternal, and was quite unfitted to be entrusted with 
any child. She was not immoral — at least, I think not ; 
probably she was faithful in the usual meaning to her hus- 
band. In her world the price was too high to make un- 
faithfulness worth while ; but she was wholly non-moral. 
Such a woman should not marry; she should never be a 
mother. I would go even further and say her place was the 
place of the prostitute. This judgment may seem hard. 
Yet I know of no other remedy. You cannot alter these 
things by pretending they are not there. And the expres- 
sion of sex is always a question of refinement and of char- 
acter. 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XI 

SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE 

My purpose in writing on this subject — No desire to lessen responsi- 
bility — The great difficulties of such an inquiry — A return to the 
question considered in the previous chapters on marriage — Some 
women and men unsuited for monogamous marriage and the 
duties of parenthood — The evils that must arise when those un- 
fitted for true monogamy are forced to live under its cover — Sex 
subjects usually viewed either with false sentiment or with vul- 
garity — Shameful concealments and sniggering do not lead to 
true chastity — These bad conditions exert more influence on men 
than on women — Celibacy as unnatural and harmful in women as 
in men — One form of union can never be imposed for every one 
— Is secrecy advantageous to society — Effect of economic condi- 
tions and pressure of opinion — Without some change prostitution 
and the degradation of the more honourable partnerships outside 
marriage must be accepted — The position of the mother must 
always be secured — The war has caused increased indepen- 
dence of women — The war as well will cause a shortage of men 
and probably a period of poverty — These must act as further 
causes of avoidance of marriage — At the same lime the nation 
will have an increased need for children — More than one form 
of sexual association required — The highest types of men and 
women should live in monogamous marriage — For others the 
sterile temporary union — The law should establish contracts pro- 
viding for the woman in such relationships — Advantages of this 
procedure — Increase not hinder morality. 



CHAPTER XI 

SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE 

"All love must have its responsibilities, or it will degrade and 
dissipate itself in mere sentiment or sensuality." 

I FIND this sentence written in an old notebook, one that 
for a long time I have not been using. I took the book 
up by chance, when my eyes lighted on this saying; at 
once I decided to place it at the beginning of this chapter 
on sexual relationships outside of marriage. I want to 
make it clear at the very start that it is far indeed from 
m}' purpose to make easy the way of irregular unions or 
at all to loosen the responsibilities that ought to bind men 
and women. 

The difficulties of writing upon all questions of sexual 
conduct are very real. Almost always one is suspected 
of advocating license and of disbelief in marriage, so com- 
monplace is it to misunderstand, so easy to misrepresent. 
For not only is there prejudice to encounter, which on no 
question is so obstinate as it is on this one that we are now 
considering of unregulated love, but we have to deal with 
so many different problems, taking account of many op- 
posed facts, where threads are crossed and entangled and 
at best can be patched only roughly together. I plead for 
a patient recognition of the real seriousness of this prob- 
lem, which, I am certain, will have to be faced in the near 
future if our sexual life and marriage are to be freed from 
secret disgrace that is unbearable. 

229 



230 MOTHERHOOD 

We have found in the two previous chapters what all of 
us must know from our own experience of life, that some 
women and men are by their temperament unsuited for 
monogamous marriage and the duties of parenthood. 
Often, I would even say as a rule, these individuals are 
strongly sexual. They will not, because with the charac- 
ter they have, they cannot, live for any long period celi- 
bate. They will marry to gain permanent sexual relief or 
they will buy temporary relief from prostitutes, unless 
they are able to seek satisfaction in an irregular union. 

Now I affirm it as my conviction that the first and sec- 
ond of these courses are likely to lead to greater misery 
and sin than the third course; and of the three, the first, 
in my opinion, is the worst. I have no doubt at all on this 
matter. No one, who is not blind to the facts of life, can 
close their eyes to the evil and suffering that a coercive 
monogamy forces upon those people who are unfitted and 
do not desire to fulfil the obligations and duties of living 
faithfully with one partner. And I would ask all those 
who stand in fear of any change or reform in our marriage 
laws or of any open toleration of wider opportunities for 
sexual friendships to consider this fact : the discredit which 
has fallen upon monogamous marriage arises largely 
from the demoralising lives lived under its cover by those 
unsuited for enduring mating. 

Our moral code is, however, much less ruled by law than 
by custom and the united will of the community. It is for 
this reason that I want to force men, and even more 
women, to think practically on these matters. My own 
opinion is firm. Apart from the fact that the dispropor- 
tion in the number of the sexes in this country makes mar- 
riage impossible for all and condemns great numbers of 



SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS 231 

women to sterile celibacy (a question I have dealt with 
elsewhere^), I am persuaded of the need for much wider 
facilities for honourable partnerships outside of per- 
manent marriage; such unions are, I am sure, necessary in 
order to harmonise our sexual life and meet the desires of 
a large, and I believe increasing, number of women and 
men, whose exceptional needs our existing institutions and 
customs ignore or crush. 

Let us view these questions in the light of their results. 
Most of us fail to meet the facts. We never realise the 
evil of this hypocrisy — love everywhere carried on secretly, 
that is acting always as a disturbing force in our sexual 
life — it is a wonn that gnaws unceasingly at the roots of 
marriage and destroys too often the most beautiful blos- 
soms of love. 

One great source of difficulty arises from the want of 
frankness in our thoughts. Especially is this the case 
with women, who throughout their lives have had the great 
fundamental facts of life clothed in euphemisms, until it 
seems as if they have succeeded, by the help of many fic- 
titious aids, in concealing the natural outward signs of 
the existence of sex. And largely from these concealments 
our every idea of sex has become tainted with sentiment 
and vulgarity. We can hardly speak of the subject even 
to our children without an apology. 

The actions and emotions of life undraped with lies seem 
to most of us anathema ; we, who have so veneered our lives 
that we know no longer of what wood they are made; we, 
who for generations have been so covered with shameful 



1 See The Truth about Woman, pp. 326-328. Also article in the 
English Review, September 1913, republished as a small book in 
America under the title Women and Morality. 



23S MOTHERHOOD 

concealments, deceiving even ourselves, and are impervious 
to the claims of that ill-bred creature — ^Life. 

And how deep we have wandered into sin in seeking to 
escape from it! 

Need we put up with this ? Must we turn our eyes away 
for ever from things as they are — stifle our desires in fear 
of what we shall do ? 

The sex-needs almost always are dealt with as though 
they stood apart and lay out of line with any other need 
or faculty of our bodies. This is, in part, due to the se- 
crecy which has kept sex as something mysterious. We 
have most of us been trained from our childhood into inde- 
cent secretiveness. But there is as well a deeper reason, and 
it will be a long time before we can change it. Sex is so 
powerful in most of us, and, when from any cause awak- 
ened into consciousness, occupies really so large a part of 
our attention, that we are afraid of ourselves, and this re- 
acts in fear of any open acknowledgment even in our 
thoughts of our own sex-needs. Still less can we grant the 
sex-needs of others, perhaps stronger and different from 
our own need. 

It is necessary to face very frankly this tremendous 
force of the sex-passion, for the most part veiled in dis- 
cussion. Many women and some men do not realise at all 
the immense complications of sex, or understand the claims 
that passion makes on many natures. Almost necessarily 
in any inquiry into these questions of sexual conduct one's 
opinions are biased by temperament and personal experi- 
ence. We are dealing with forces in which the individual 
element cannot be set aside. It is foolishness always to 
preach continence. Sexual abstinence is possible without 
great effort for some people, it is not possible for all. I 



SEXtTAL RELATIONSHIPS 233 

am certain we have to recognize this fact, and to allow for 
its action. It is not what we want people to do, but what 
they will do, that we are considering. 

If we look at the matter practically, it is of course 
necessary to remember that this question of the possibility 
of, as well as the advantage to be derived from, sexual ab- 
stinence is an entirely different one, as it relates to the 
time before, or after, the first experience of love. * The 
sex desires are strong when roused, but when not definitely 
aroused, the ideal of chastity asserts itself, and for long 
periods these desires may not greatly occupy the conscious 
imagination. It is clear that the physical problem cannot 
be, and ought not to be, considered apart from the will. 
Great good in some cases may be done by establishing con- 
trol over thought. 

It is, however, idle to count on a course of thought and 
action being taken by the rough maj ority among us which 
so much of our civilisation and daily environment makes 
difficult and indeed impossible. A race of young men and 
women surrounded with shameful concealments and bred to 
a blind acceptance of wrong sexual conditions, accus- 
tomed to an atmosphere of sniggering and suggestiveness 
in connection with the central facts of love and life — such 
a race cannot have, much less practise, an ideal of true 
chastity. 

These wrong and vulgar conditions without doubt have 
acted more strongly against men than against women. 
And I would note in passing, that here, as I believe, we 
find one explanation of the greater continence among un- 
married women than among unmarried men. It is not be- 
cause satisfaction for the sex-needs is more necessary for 
the health and well-being of men than it is for the health 



^34 MOTHERHOOD 

and well-being of women — a statement I do not believe ; nor 
is it proved that this absence of conscious sex-desires neces- 
sarily implies the absence of unconscious sex-action; all 
that can be claimed is that the sexual impulses have been 
diverted into different expressions, and the explanation of 
such diversion is to be sought in the boy's and young man's 
education and life, which forces sex so much more strongly 
into the conscious thought and attention. 

We are dealing with a question very difficult to solve. 
On this assumption that the sex-needs of the man are more 
imperative than the sex-needs of the woman, much that is 
false has been accepted as true; there are many who have 
advocated a "duplex sexual morality," and while demand- 
ing from the woman complete sexual abstinence until she 
marries, regard this as impossible in the case of men. Such 
a separation as this between the sex-needs of man and the 
sex-needs of woman is, in my opinion, a very grave error. 
Celibacy is unnatural and harmful in man, it is at least 
equally unnatural and harmful in woman. 

Now, it is on this question of the sex-needs of women 
that I find myself, as I have suggested already, in such 
direct opposition to the great majority of women, numbers 
of whom do not, will not, admit to a consciousness of any 
kind of sexual need. I believe they are quite honest, but I 
know they are mistaken. 

The doctrine of chastity being the natural and special 
virtue of women is entirely false. Complete abstinence 
from love cannot be borne by women through a long pe- 
riod of years without producing serious results on the 
body and the mind. And these results are by no means 
clearly dependent on a conscious knowledge of unsatisfied 
sex. The evil may be pronounced even when the woman 



SEXtJAL RELATIONSHIPS 235 

herself has not the sHghtest knowledge of her real needs. 
In many women the penalty is paid in an unceasing and 
wearying restlessness of mind and body. We have also to 
face the fact that prolonged and enforced abstinence may 
act to cultivate a morbid obsession with sexual things. I be- 
lieve that the celibate often is less chaste than the normally 
sexual individual. This may seem to be a wanton charge 
to some, but I am not speaking without due consideration. 

I know well that some among my readers, and in par- 
ticular women, will say that I am wrong, many will accuse 
me of exaggerating and complain that I see sex in every- 
thing; the few only will know that I am right. I would, 
however, refer all those who doubt to the researches of 
Freud and his followers, which have proved in the most 
conclusive way that the manifestations of sex may be con- 
cealed in numberless guises. Without some understanding 
of the "Unconscious" it is useless to attempt to deal with 
these questions. We need to realise that the fact of an 
individual, or group of individuals, being unconscious of 
the presence of sex does not prove that sex is not acting 
strongly and often harmfully within them. Nay, we may 
go further and say that could it be proved that desire was 
absent and no sex difficulties of any kind be discovered, this 
is no reason why we should necessarily be too satisfied. If 
no kind of action is apparent, it is very probable that some 
deep evil is at work, which hinders sex from a more healthy 
and open expression. 

I am haunted by the fear that the careless reader will 
think I am writing against chastity. This is not so. I 
would affirm again, with all the power that I have, that 
compulsory sexual abstinence may not be confused with 
voluntary chastity. We must be very clear in our thought 



2S6 MOTHERHOOD 

about this. We can never establish an ideal of true chas- 
tity until we have rooted out from our social life all the 
unnatural and empty forms of chastity. The long waiting 
for marriage which economic and other causes have forced 
upon us, more and more increases the difficulties of main- 
taining any true chastity. It is a great evil which almost 
always wastes the energies of life. 

There are very many women (as also there are men) who 
are moral, because they are too great cowards to be im- 
moral. The reasons for chastity must in many cases be 
sought in the poverty of experience and the difficulty of 
obtaining love, in the hard binding of circumstances, and, 
even more often, in the terror of being found out. Re- 
spectability is the strong moral safeguard of woman. The 
conception of faithfulness to one mate (the true chastity) 
is as strong in many men as it is in any woman, a fact to 
which I gladly bear witness, from my knowledge of the 
men I have known. It is too commonly taken for granted 
that sex-passion is less refined in men and different from 
sex-passion in women. I am sure in many cases it is not 
true. I am not going to discuss the question further, as it 
is one that cannot easily be proved. 

It is, however, very necessary to break down the idea 
that for the impulses of sex, with their immense compli- 
cations and differences, there is one general rule either for 
men or for women. In every case the element of personal 
idiosyncrasy must be taken into account, and, for this rea- 
son, the difficulties of these questions are enormously com- 
plex. Nor is it possible, I am sure, to make any arbitrary 
judgments. To me the man or woman who is able to live 
a celibate life is not necessarily better than the man or 
woman who is not. I may prefer one type, I may dislike 



SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS S37 

the other, but this also is a matter of my personal idio- 
syncrasy. We cannot safely class those who differ from 
ourselves as wrong, and set them down as fit only for sup- 
pression and restraint. We have to put aside those shrieks 
of blame that are possible only to the ignorant. 

It is all very well to preach the ideal of complete sexual 
abstinence until marriage, but there are the clear, hard con- 
ditions of contemporary circumstances for all but 'the 
really rich, who can marry when they want to do so with- 
out other consideration, and the very poor who marry 
young because they have nothing at all to consider. We 
have to face the presence amongst us to-day of an amount 
of suffering through enforced celibacy which is acting in 
many directions in degrading our sexual lives. Any num- 
ber of these sufferers, both the unmarried and the married 
who are ill-mated, are everywhere amongst us. I need not 
say more to prove this : the facts face us all, unless, indeed, 
we are too ignorant and too prejudiced to know what is 
happening. 

Many new lessons will have to be learnt. I would sug- 
gest as a first step towards honesty and health, that we 
ought to claim an open declaration of the existence of any 
form of sexual relationship betAveen a woman and a man. 
We shall, I believe, do this, if not now, then later, because 
we are finding out the evils that must ensue, both to the 
individuals concerned and to the society of which they are 
members, by forcing men and women into the dark, im- 
moral way of concealments. 

It is ridiculous to say, as many do, that sexual relation- 
ships between two people affect no one but themselves, un- 
less a child is born. The partners in even the strongest 
and purest mutual passion have no right to say to society, 



238 MOTHERHOOD 

"This is our business and none of yours." The conse- 
quences may be so grave and wide for society that the 
deed can never be confined to the interests of the pair con- 
cerned. And the sexual partnership that is kept secret 
will work anti-socially just in the same way as any other 
secret partnership. Opportunity will be given to those 
who desire to sin and escape the responsibilities of the part- 
nership, while other men and women, who wish to and 
would act honourably, find the way so difficult that in nine 
cases out of ten they fail in their endeavors. Many 
unions that now are shameful would not be shameful if the 
parties had not been driven into concealments, which can- 
not fail to act in a way that is immoral. 

We must see things a little more as they are. We must 
accept ourselves as we are. We must do more than this, 
we must accept others as they are, and cease from blaming 
them when we find them different from ourselves. We must 
give up being hypocrites. To force every one to accept 
the one form of union is not the wisest way to deal with 
the matter. We must understand what is the result of our 
doing this. It does not prevent people from acting 
wrongly. Anything may be done, any sexual partnership 
be undertaken, however shameful, as long as it is hidden. 
We shall have more morality, not less, by an open recog- 
nition of honourable sexual friendships entered into out- 
side the permanent binding of monogamous marriage. 

I do not think we need fear to do this. My own faith 
in monogamous marriage, as the most practical, the best, 
and the happiest form of union for the great majority of 
people, is so strongly rooted that I do not wish, because I 
hold it as unnecessary, to force any one either to enter into 
or to stay within its bonds. I want them to do this because 



SEXIJAL relationships 239 

they themselves want to be bound. We get further and 
further away from real monogamy by allowing no other 
form of honourable partnerships. 

Under present economic conditions and the pressure of 
social opinion, the penalities that the woman has had to 
pay for any sexual relationship outside of marriage are 
very heavy. This is manifest. Indeed, when we see the 
difficulties faced in these unions, that so many women do 
take the risks is another proof, if one were needed, of the 
elemental strength of the sex-passion in women. But mark 
this: it is only the woman whose social conscience is un- 
awakened, or the few women strong enough and able to 
ignore the censure of their friends, who can enter into 
these irregular relationships — except in a hateful secrecy. 
And this has acted, as I believe, harmfully in a way not 
usually recognised, in so far as it has driven into mar- 
riage many who would have been better not to marry. 

At present our monogamous marriage is buttressed with 
prostitution and maintained with the help of countless 
secret extra conjugal relationships, which thus makes our 
moral attitude one of intolerable deception. To this ques- 
tion I shall presently return. 

Under existing social conditions the opportunities for 
sexual relationships to meet the needs of those women and 
men unable, or not desiring, to marry must, in almost all 
cases, entail the sacrifice of the woman. It is an unsocial, 
because an ostracised union. Our efforts at reform have 
so far been not only ineffective, but absurd. It is no use 
shirking it, if some change cannot be made, then we must 
accept prostitution and wild-love as well as the degradation 
of all the more honourable partnerships entered into out- 
side of marriage. 



S40 MOTHERHOOD 

I believe that many of these problems of our sexual life 
must remain unsolved; some of them, perhaps, are unsolv- 
able, but certain of the evils are preventable. And first 
note this : there is one rule that is able and ought to guide 
us. I have asserted elsewhere,-^ what again I would affirm 
here: it is an essential fact of sexual morality, as I 
conceive it, that in any relation between the two sexes — 
I care not whether the association be legal or illegal — ^the 
position of the woman as the mother must be made secure. 
The immoral union is the union which results in bad and 
irresponsible parenthood. 

It is because I believe this, that I wish to see saner, more 
practical, and more moral relations made possible between 
those women and men who live together but do not marry. 

But before I attempt the difficult task of suggesting 
what seems to me the way in which better conditions could 
be established, it will be necessary to note briefly a few 
facts concerning changes actually taking place in the 
position of women, which it seems to me must be certain to 
affect profoundly the conditions of marriage and the prob- 
lem we are considering. 

The quite new importance as workers which women have 
now obtained will react inevitably on the relations between 
the sexes. In every sort of occupation, in clerking, shop- 
assisting, railway work, motor driving and conducting, 
police work, in labour on the land and in many more un- 
usual capacities, they are being found efficient beyond 
precedent. And in the munition factories, in the handling 
of heavy and intricate machinery, their adaptability and 
inventiveness, as well as their steadfastness and enthusiasm, 
have surprised all those who are without knowledge of the 
1 The Truth about Woman, p. 191. 



SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS 241 

bewildering resourcefulness of the feminine character. All 
the disengaged energy of women has been employed. They 
have gained a strong position in the economic world. This 
is evident, but what is not realised are the forces working 
beneath. 

What is going to be the permanent result? Will all this 
energy evaporate after the war, will it be reabsorbed in the 
home and work directly connected therewith, or will this 
great force of women's work be still used in industrial and 
other employments.? It is not easy to give a certain 
answer. 

Leaving aside the question whether such work if 
permanently continued will be good or bad for women, a 
matter on which already I have expressed my opinion 
strongly,^ I want to consider how these fresh and advan- 
tageous labour conditions have affected, and will, I think, 
go on affecting, women's own desires. The question is 
whether this change that war conditions have brought is 
one which the desires of women cause them to welcome, 
or whether it is an arrangement that has arisen out of 
necessity to which they are essentially antagonistic. 

What, in my opinion, makes the present situation dan- 
gerous is, that long before the war women were forcing an 
entrance into the world of labour, and struggling in com- 
petition with men to gain the positions which now are being 
thrust upon them. And I do not believe that in the mass 
to-day they are doing their work temporarily and to re- 
place men for the period of the war, but rather they are 
aiming to establish their own economic emancipation. 
Probably of the million women " who have plunged into 

1 See p. 51. 

2 This estimate of the number of Women War Workers is given 
by Sir Leo Chiozza Money. 



M2 MOTHERHOOD 

new work in connection with the war, the great majority 
are much better off economically than ever they were in 
times of peace. War has brought more of gain than of 
sacrifice. The new thing is the opportunity that has 
come. Individually women were adventurous before the 
war; they have now become adventurous as a class. War 
has but accentuated and made obvious the change that for 
long had been taking place in the desires of women. This 
turning away from themselves, from their own lives and 
duties, to the world and employments and duties of men, 
is a thing that was going on before the war, slowly and 
against much prejudice, but what matters is that it was 
going on. 

I shall make no attempt to deal with the serious economic 
results that are likely to occur should women, when the war 
is ended, struggle to compete with men in the labour mar- 
ket. The disasters that would follow such action are suffi- 
ciently plain. One result would certainly be a clash of 
sex, unavoidable in a work-struggle for the upper hand 
between women and men. The great temptation to women 
then will be to keep their positions b}^ accepting lower 
wages than the men can take. No one can know whether 
they will do this. 

There can be no question that the situation will be diffi- 
cult. For the return of women to the home and what 
hitherto has been considered exclusivelj^ feminine work is 
going to mean much more than a change of occupation ; 
it will be going back to the insistent duties of the narrowed 
woman's sphere with new ideas and a fresh command of 
life. It is useless pretending that this can be easy. For 
one thing, the great uplift in women's wages has given 
girls as well as women an independence, with a quite 



SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS 243 

strange joy as spenders which they have not known 
before. 

And this new power in industry has been associated also 
with many women with a new power in the home. The 
withdrawal to the war of the men of the family has left 
women with an opportunity to spend incomes over which 
hitherto they had no direct control. So that sometimes one 
wonders whether men will be allowed to re-enter their 
homes, if they come back, on the same terms as before they 
held. Will women again accept with contentment a posi- 
tion of economic dependence? This cannot fail, I think, 
to act directly on the conditions of marriage. The ques- 
tion would seem to be this: Will women come back to the 
home believing the home to be the central interest of their 
lives? Will they feel that motherhood, with the care of 
the little child and all the duties it should entail, is the ulti- 
mate joy, for the denial of which no personal freedom or 
success in work can compensate? 

It is one of the unhappy features of our present con- 
dition of necessity for women to carry on the w^ork of 
this country that the most deep and far-reaching issues 
are being decided in haste, and in many cases by young 
girls who have never been taught by any wise training to 
realise their own nature as women, or to understand their 
sexual needs with their immense restricting power. And 
my fear is that the things which matter most to life will 
be lost. I feel that almost everything in the future depends 
on the inner attitude of the thousands and thousands of 
girls and young women who to-daj^ have gone out of the 
home. I wish I had the gift to make them feel the far- 
acting importance of their personal attitude. The root 
of all action is the will or desire. Yes, that is the danger. 



S44 MOTHERHOOD 

Our desires are the greatest realities that we have, and we 
should look closely to the direction towards which they are 
turned. Nothing but the strongest desire on the part of 
women will save the home. Many forces will be acting to 
make permanent conditions that cannot fail to act ad- 
versely to any right ideal of home life. My hope is that 
women in the mass will understand in time and resist these 
forces. Yet, I do not know, and sometimes my fear is 
more active than my hope. 

At least, it is evident that in the immediate future the 
home is not going to be re-established ^without effort. 
Women will have to make great sacrifice to surrender in 
every direction the new power of controlling and spend- 
ing money which now they are enjoying. And for this 
reason, even if for no other, many women almost cer- 
tainly will seek to hold their places in the labour world and 
keep on working for themselves. Therefore, it is, I think, 
safe to expect that to some limited extent the present ex- 
tension of women's employment outside the home will be 
permanent when peace is established. 

Certainly it is unnecessary for me to say, after what I 
have written in the earlier chapters of my book, how exceed- 
ingly I regret the permanence of conditions that can seem 
good only in an industrial society. In my opinion the 
working of women will be the greatest of the many dis- 
asters that are likely to follow and remain from the war. 
I wish I had the power to prevent it. I do not, however, 
see any way in which this can be done. For one thing, 
if the desires of women are being set in a direction away 
from the home, this, as I have just said, must count as 
the strongest factor of all. What women want to do is 
what they are likely in the end to do. 



SEXlfAL RELATIONSHIPS 245 

So many women have been for long, and still are, suf- 
fering from the delusion that conditions which industrial- 
ism, with all its failures in the art of life, first established, 
and which war now has made necessary, are an advantage 
to be maintained after the need of war has made them 
unnecessary. This is the great mistake. I would emphasise 
again what I have shown in an earlier chapter,^ that con- 
ditions which act against the home and marriage (always 
dependent on the individual home) are sure proof of social 
instability. Such conditions are centuries old; all this 
flood of change is bringing nothing that is new. In all 
periods of unsettled life the individual home and the family 
have been threatened. The primitive form of marriage, 
the maternal form, where the husband visited the wife in 
her own home, is very near to the most modern suggestions 
for the readjustment of marriage. And the heavy working 
of women is a further sign of disturbance and of primi- 
tive conditions of life. It is a step backward, not a step 
forward. Few women, however, realise that this is so. 
Perhaps this explains why so many among them are talk- 
ing and behaving to-day as if no more babies were desired 
to be born. 

How far this will be carried I do not profess to say. 
Women will have a fresh power to refuse the position of 
wife and mother ; thus it seems likely that there may be an 
increased option against marriage in its true and binding 
form. And closely connected with the independent posi- 
tion of women will be the great shortage, for the next 
decade, of marriageable men, due to the killing and dis- 
ablements of war. It will be a world in which the propor- 
tion of women will be very high. And although it would 
1 See p. 155. 



S46 MOTHERHOOD 

be folly to estimate precisely how this great numerical 
strength of one sex will act, whether it will strengthen 
women's position, or, as it equally well may, will lessen their 
importance in a society crowded with unwanted women, it is 
plain that it must directly affect the sexual relationships. 
Women, accustomed when young to control their own lives 
and able to be self-supporting, will not only find it much 
more difficult to marry, but they will be in a position to 
get along economically without marriage. To every mar- 
ried woman there are likely to be three or four unmarried 
ones.^ It will also probably be a period of poverty. The 
economic stress which war causes will almost necessarily 
continue in the years when we shall all be compelled to 
meet the huge task of national recovery that peace must 
bring. It is possible that for some years it will be more 
difficult to maintain a family than it has ever been before. 
This will be a third factor acting against marriage, 
and tending to maintain as permanent the class of ener- 
getic, not strongly maternal and undomesticated women 
workers.^ 

In different directions also causes very much the same 
may possibly be acting to the same end. The desires of 
men as well as the desires of women may be affected, and 
be turned from marriage and the duties of the family and 
the home. Many men will not come back out of the hell of 
war the same men that entered it. It may not be easy to 

1 Sir Leo Chiozza Money, in an article in Tit Bits (October 21, 
1916), "Women's Share in Winning the War," says, "Assuming 
peace to come by the end of 1917, the country will probably con- 
tain about two millions more women than men of marriageable 
age." 

2 1 am here in agreement with Mr. H. G. Wells' forecast, "What 
is Coming?" See his essay on Women and the War, already re- 
ferred to, p. 167. 



SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS 247 

plan life on the old rules, the safe customs of civilisation 
may well count for less. Some men will not want to return 
to the posts kept open for them by women ; to sell table- 
cloths to fussy women, or to spend dull days in offices add- 
ing columns of figures and addressing envelopes, may not 
appear "a man's job" to men who have met the stark facts 
of death and life. I doubt the zeal of the response of all 
these men to the binding ties of family life. And in this 
way, it may be, that many fathers will be cut off from the 
family and turned away from desiring the sacrifice and 
duties that children entail, which cannot fail to act as a 
further force in modifying marriage. 

If we try to take an entirely practical view of the posi- 
tion, certain grave facts must, I think, become evident. 
For side by side with these forces acting against marriage, 
and the parental sacrifice necessary to maintain the ideal 
of the family, must be placed the nation's increased need 
for children — in particular for male children. The repair 
of the war drain on the world's manhood must fall heaviest 
on women. It is woman who has borne and bred and loved 
each life that has been lost by war. It is she who will 
have to make good the waste. This is her bill of compul- 
sory service. 

Never will child life have been so precious as it will be 
after this World War. Already in this country we are 
beginning to recognise this need. Excellent work for the 
restriction of infant mortality and the protection of child 
life is beginning to be undertaken, and these questions are 
receiving a practical recognition which they never gained 
in the days of peace. But much more drastic action than 
has as yet been considered will be needed. It is certainly 
not inconceivable that this need for children may lead to 



248 MOTHERHOOD 

changes both in our public and private attitudes to many 
sexual questions. I am hopeful that it may force us to 
face squarely many problems that hitherto we have turned 
from in fear. 

Speculations on all matters connected with marriage and 
the relations between the sexes are so hazardous that they 
are likely to be wrong. I do, however, think that, having 
regard to the direction in which so many forces are acting, 
the position in regard to the special problem we are consid- 
ering has become clearer. Monogamous marriage and the 
home based upon maternity and offspring has got to be 
saved. And in my opinion this will be done most surely 
by a frank acceptance, under the almost certain conditions 
of the future, of more than one form of sexual as- 
sociation. 

This proposal is not made lightly. I am not advocat- 
ing such a course as being in itself desirable or undesirable. 
I am attempting merely to estimate the drift and tendency 
of the times, considering those forces that were beginning 
to act before the war and, as I think, must continue, even 
with greater power, after the war. I suggest, therefore, 
the one course that seems to me can in any practical way 
help us to be more moral. All the facts that we have found 
work out to force us to the realisation that an increasing 
number of women will not be able, and probably will not 
desire, even if they marry, to bear children. Now, I do not 
believe in changing the ideal of marriage so that its duties 
no longer bind women to their children and to the home. 
I think it better to make provision for other partnerships, 
to meet the sex-needs (for we can cause nothing but evil by 
failing to meet them) of the women and men who are not 
able or do not desire to enter the holy bonds of marriage 



SEXITAL RELATIONSHIPS 249 

and undertake together the duties and sacrifice inevitable 
to the founding and maintenance of a family. 

I know the whole question is a very difficult one. Let 
me try to make my position somewhat clearer. 

I am in one way in agreement with Roman Catholic 
Christianity (I use the phrase to make my meaning plain, 
and ask indulgence if to any one it seems in itself inde- 
fensible). The Roman Catholic Church admits the need of 
two standards of sexual conduct — some women and men 
are fitted for a religious life and should bind themselves to 
celibacy ; others need to marry, and to them marriage Is 
permitted. The difference between my view and the one 
just expressed Is that, whereas it is usual to suppose the 
morals of the celibate monk or nun superior to those of the 
married man or woman, I should hold the opposite opinion ; 
it is the highest types of men and women who would seek to 
marry and be best and happiest if living together as faith- 
ful man and wife, as devoted father and mother. I do, 
however, hold that there are others — ^women as well as men 
— without the gifts that make for successful parenthood 
or happy permanent marriage. I would recognise the 
divergence of these two roughly defined classes and let 
those who cannot marry be openly permitted to live to- 
gether In temporary childless unions, destined, I hope, 
to show to the world the inferiority of every type of ideal 
of the sex relationships other than the monogamous union, 
which fulfils the completion of the woman and the man In 
the child created by their love. And further, these sterile 
unions would, by their childlessness, act to remove for ever 
from the world those unsuited to be parents. It Is this last 
result that matters most. As long as we force those un- 
suited for faithful mating Into marriage and hold them 



^50 MOTHERHOOD 

bound against their desire, children will be born who must 
pay the penalty in weakness of character of their parents' 
sins against love. 

I believe if there were some open recognition of honour- 
able partnerships outside of marriage, not necessarily 
permanent, with proper provision for the future, guarding 
the woman, who, in my opinion, should be in all cases pro- 
tected, a provision not dependent on the generosity of the 
man and made after the love which sanctioned the union 
has waned, but decided upon by the man and the woman 
in the form of a contract before the relationship was en- 
tered upon, then there would be many women ready to 
undertake such unions gladly ; there would be women as 
well as men who, I believe, would prefer them to mo- 
nogamous marriage that binds them permanently to one 
partner for life. In this way many marriages would be 
prevented that inevitably come to disaster. And this would 
leave greater chances of marriage and child-bearing for 
other and more suitable types. 

It is also possible that such friendship-contracts might, 
under present disastrous conditions, be made by those who 
are unsuitably mated and yet are unable, or do not wish, 
to sever the bond between them, with some other partner 
they could love. Such contracts would open up possibilities 
of honourable partnerships to many who must otherwise 
suffer from enforced sexual abstinence or be driven into 
shameful and secret unions. 

By this means a solution might be found for conditions 
of dishonour in our midst that we all know to be there — 
dishonour that, as far as I am able to see, is likely to be 
increased, and not lessened, in the near future by the con- 
ditions left by war. Moreover, prostitution, and also the 



SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS 251 

diseases so closely connected with prostitution, would be 
greatly lessened, though I do not think that sexual sins 
would cease. There will alwa^^s be for a very long time 
men and women who will be attracted to wild-love. This 
we have to recognise. Men would not, however, be driven 
to buy sexual relief.^ 

We have got, I am certain, to recognise that our form 
of permanent marriage — the monogamous union — cannot 
meet the sex-needs of all people. To assert that it can do 
this is to close our eyes to the facts we all know to exist. 
The extending of the opportunities of honourable love must 
be faced before we can hope for more moral conditions in 
marriage. I must affirm again how necessary, in my 
opinion, is some kind of fixed public recognition for every 
form of sexual relationship between a man and a woman, 
so that there may be some accepted standard of conduct 
for the partners entering into them. 

May not something be done now, when we are being 
forced to consider these questions, to make some such recog- 
nition possible? Partnerships other than marriage have 
had a place as a recognised and guarded institution in 
many older and more primitive societies, and it may be, as 
I have tried to show, that the conditions brought upon us 
after the World War may act in forcing upon us a similar 
acceptance. 

I believe that, in face of the many past disorders in our 

1 On this question see The Truth about Woman, pp. 372, 373. An 
article by Mr. W. L George, "Women after the War," appeared in 
the English Review of December 1. Mr. George gives some very 
interesting statistics as to the disproportion between the numbers 
of the two sexes, treating the question from a very new point of 
view. He shows that the number of unmarried men in England 
and Wales at the last census so greatly outnumbered the extra 
women that there were "nearly three men for every superfluous 
woman !" 



252 MOTHERHOOD 

sexual conduct, such a change would work for good and 
not for evil ; that it would not destroy marriage, but might 
re-establish its sanctity. 

The whole question of any sexual relationships outside 
of marriage in the past has been left in the gutter, so to 
speak, in darkness and concealment. This would be 
changed. It is the results that have almost always fol- 
lowed these irregular unions that have branded them as 
anti-social acts. But the desertion of women, which has 
arisen from the conditions of secrecy under which they now 
exist, would be put to an end. One reason why extra con- 
jugal relationships are discredited is because the difficulties 
placed around them are so numerous that, as a rule, only 
the weak, the foolish, and the irresponsible undertake these 
partnerships. Make these partnerships honourable and 
honourable men and women will enter into them. I do not 
see how we can forbid or treat with bitterness any union 
that is openly entered into and in which the duties under- 
taken are faithfully fulfilled. It is our attitude of blame 
that has made this impossible. 

I can anticipate an objection that will probably be 
raised. Why, I shall be asked, if sexual relationships are to 
be acknowledged outside of marriage, preserve marriage at 
all.'' I have answered this question sufficiently. Monoga- 
mous marriage will be maintained because the great 
majority of women and men want it to be maintained. I 
have affirmed before my own belief in the monogamic 
union: the ideal marriage is that of the man and woman 
who have dedicated themselves to each other for the life 
of both, faithfully together to fulfil the duties of family 
life. This is the true monogamy; this is the marriage 
which I regard as sanctified. But I, regarding it as a holy 



SEXl/AL RELATIONSHIPS 253 

state, would preserve it for those suited for the binding 
duties of the individual home so intimately connected 
with it. 

And I do disavow the sanctity of many professedly 
monogamous marriages that are maintained only with the 
support of prostitution and clandestine loves. Squalid in- 
trigues have been the shadow of the old, narrow moral 
code. The contract-partnerships I have suggested will do 
nothing to change the sanctity of any true marriages. 
And the answer I would give to those who fear an increase 
of immorality from any openly recognised provision for 
sexual partnerships outside of permanent marriage is, that 
no deliberate change made in the future in our sexual con- 
duct can conceivably make moral conditions worse than 
they have been in the recent past. As a matter of fact, 
every form of irregular union has existed and does exist 
to-day, but shamefully and hidden. It is certain that they 
will continue, and that their number will be increased. 

I have sought to put these matters as plainly as may 
be in the conviction that nothing can be gained by con- 
cealment. An}^ one who writes on the subject of marriage 
reform is very open to misconception. It is not realised 
that the effort of the reformer is not to diminish at all the 
bonds in any sexual partnerships, rather the desire is to 
strengthen them, but the forms of the partnership will have 
to be more varied, unless, indeed, we prefer to accept un- 
regulated and secret vice. Matters are likely to get worse 
and not better. We shall, I do most sincerely believe, gain 
more morality by doing what I am pleading for than will be 
gained in any other way. 

The only logical objection that I can think of being 
advanced against an honourable recognition of these part- 



254 MOTHERHOOD 

nerships is that, by doing away with all necessity for con- 
cealments, their number is likely to be larger than if the old 
penalties were maintained. This is undoubtedly true; it 
is also true that recognition is the only possible way by 
which such unions can cease to be shameful. Prohibition 
and laws, however stringent, can do nothing. The past 
has proved their failure; they will fail still worse in the 
future. 

Nor is the change really so great or so startling as at 
first it may appear to be. Our marriage in its present 
form is primarily an arrangement for the protection of the 
woman and the family. What I want is that some measure, 
at least, of the protection now given to the legal wife, 
should also be afforded to all women who in an open and 
honourable way fulfil any of the same duties. I am not 
seeking to make immorality easier, that is very far indeed 
from my purpose. These changes for which I am pleading 
will make immorality much harder, for it will not be so easy 
as now it is to escape from the responsibilities of love. 

No one can suppose, of course, that these changes can be 
other than gradual. There will be no stage at which a 
large section of society will give up the accepted conven- 
tion of concealments with regard to unregulated unions, 
and will stand perplexed as to how they may readjust 
their opinion and moral judgments on this question. What 
will happen is this. The slow abandonment by society of 
the old attitude of blame and fear, as experiments in sexual 
partnership are made, at first by the few, to be followed by 
an ever increasing number. When the need for change 
arises, then does a change come. 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XII 



THE UNMARRIED MOTHER 

The law should help unmarried parents to give adequate protection 
to their child — Repressive terrors drive men to desert girls 
made pregnant through their lust — The penalty for illegitimate 
parentage should not be paid by the child — At present the child 
does pay — Figures to show this — Illegitimate infant death-rate — 
Unmarried mother not able to give proper care to her child — 
Some mothers unfit to care for their children — Different types of 
unmarried mothers — Four cases — Where both parents working- 
class least harm usually results from birth of a love-child — En- 
lightened legislation in Scandinavia — The law in England and in 
France — Good legislation in Australia and New Zealand — Other 
countries — Five proposals for reforming our law. 



CHAPTER XII 



THE UNMARRIED MOTHER 



"The British Empire has invested thousands of its best lives to 
purchase future immunity for civilisation. This investment is too 
great to be thrown avi^ay." — Right Hon. D. Lloyd George. 

One of the most pressing questions that we shall have 
to face in the near future is the attitude and practical 
action which, as a people, we are going to adopt towards 
the unmarried mother and her child. I have so far said 
almost nothing upon this problem of illegitimacy, though 
the whole difficult question is connected with, and is, in 
fact, closely dependent for its solution on, the conclusions 
we arrived at in the preceding chapter on Sexual Relation- 
ships outside of Marriage; we then realised the moral 
advantage that would result from an open avowal and the 
regulation of all sexual partnerships, with the fixing, as far 
as this is possible, of a standard of conduct to be expected 
and claimed from those who enter into them. I have left 
over this question of the child on purpose that we may 
give it special consideration. No other matter is of greater 
significance to my book on Motherhood than is this, and 
none is deeper in my own interest or, in my opinion, of 
more urgent importance. 

It is really impossible to evade it much longer. There 
is obviously something ridiculous, at a time when the fate- 
ful importance of child-life is being forced more and more 
upon our attention, to repeat our conventional, unimagina- 
tive and inconsistent judgments. 

257 



258 MOTHERHOOD 

We are learning new and sharp lessons. Terrific war 
losses are teaching governments to consider the necessity 
of preserving the new generation even to its last and 
meanest members. At last the movements to improve the 
condition of illegitimate children, for which many of us 
have for long struggled in vain, have received new impetus. 
What humanity has been powerless to do, the most ancient 
of all inhumanities — war — ^has suddenly accomplished. 

And it is well. We cannot go on as we have done before. 
We call motherhood holy, and yet we have sanctioned the 
sacrifice of mothers, driving them to crimes, to abortion, 
to child-murders and to death; we have sent them into 
sweated industries ; we have turned them out onto the streets, 
forcing them to choose between starvation and prostitu- 
tion. We have permitted the yearly destruction of tens 
of thousands of little children, born into a hard and barren 
world without the slightest provision for their physical 
and mental needs. At the same time, the fact has been 
hammered into us of the declining birth-rate. This has 
gone on and on, but we have done nothing that the evils 
may be stopped and life take the place of unnecessary 
death. 

I cannot understand an attitude which simultaneously 
condemns the non-maternal woman, who does not wish to be 
a mother, accusing her of sin in shirking the duty of bear- 
ing children, and then brands the unmarried mother to in- 
famy. By the cruelty of our law and the short-sightedness 
of our "moral" attitude we have worked to make life a 
martyrdom for the unmarried mother, and for the children 
born out of wedlock, who are smirched by us with the shame 
of their illegitimate birth, and thus are forced downward in 
the hard struggle of life. 



THE UNMARRIED MOTHER 259 

And such foolish and cruel action has all been done in 
the name of morality ! Let us tear the mask from the lying 
face of our social conscience. We need a clean clearance 
of a moral attitude that really is profoundly immoral. 

Let no one make a mistake. In pleading for these un- 
honoured mothers and their children, I am not advocating 
illegal parentage. There is a sin of illegitimacy, as pres- 
ently I shall show. Irresponsible parentage must always 
be immoral. It is, however, the parents who behave ille- 
gitimately, not the child, since it can never be the fault 
of any child that its parents have brought it into the 
world. I would wish for every child that it should be born 
within the happy safeguards of a true monogamous mar- 
riage. But I cannot close my eyes to the facts of life. I 
know that we shall not be able to make it impossible for 
extra-conjugal procreation to take place: love-children 
will be born. And what we, in our curious moral muddle- 
headedness, forget is that by penalising the mother we 
cannot escape the penalty being paid by the child. Our 
attitude in the past has been a reproach to our social 
intelligence. 

I am very far indeed from any desire to lessen parental 
responsibility. And if I want the harshness of our law 
and our moral attitude changed, it is first of all because 
I wish to make it possible for unmarried parents — the 
father as well as the mother — to give adequate protection 
to their child. If they do not do this willingly, I would 
use the pressure of the law and a strong public opinion to 
bring them to their duty. Under present conditions this 
can never be done. It is because our harshness does no 
good that I condemn it. 

The iniquity of our bastardy laws and public opinion 



S60 MOTHERHOOD 

concerning illegitimacy both reflect the Anglo-Saxon habit 
of mind, which persists in ignoring all social problems 
arising from the sex relation. We have never yet squarely 
faced the question, we have just pushed it into the darkness, 
and pretended it was not there. It has even been a kind of 
disgrace to bring it forward; and the evil and the waste 
is so hidden up that most of us have been quite unaware of 
its immense existence among us. But we cannot thus 
escape from what we have done, or rather have left undone. 

The fact is, that all our thought on these questions has 
been obscured by the puritan view of punishment, based 
on the assumption that harshness in the treatment of sex- 
ual offences will make for a higher standard of morality. 
Do we really believe this.^ Surely the underlying fallacy 
of our morality has always rested here — in our desire to 
crucify the offender. We forget that, by doing this, we 
but open the way to make easy, even if not inevitable, the 
committal of further sin. By our attitude we drive men 
to desert the girls made pregnant through their lust, and 
open the way for them to escape from responsibility for 
their sexual sins and to disown their fatherhood; we do 
everything that we can to encourage unfit parenthood. 

Few people want to do wrong; they drift into wrong; 
the circumstances are too hard or their wills too weak to 
resist. We are suffering a great deal of confusion from 
demanding from men and women a rule of conduct in sex 
without taking any care that the conditions of life render 
such conduct practicable. In the last chapter I tried to 
make plain how short-sighted has been the attempt to 
force all types into a single mould. The plan I there out- 
lined for an open acceptance of honourable unions outside 
of permanent marriage, would cut at the roots of many of 



THE UNMARRIED MOTHER 261 

these problems, and, in particular, by lessening the suffer- 
ings from enforced sexual abstinence, would render much 
less frequent those disgraceful and hidden unions which 
result in illegitimate births ; it would also materially reduce 
the dire results of venereal diseases, and would be, in my 
opinion, more beneficial and far-reaching than anything 
that yet has been proposed. I would affirm again that I 
am not advocating license of conduct. It is necessary to 
proclaim allegiance to the God of morals, who has pro- 
claimed for ever "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not." But 
it is necessary also to understand that repressive terrors 
may drive men and women into greater sins. 

Our bastardy laws act directly in this immoral way. 
The child born of unmarried parents has been branded 
under Christian teaching as "the child of sin," and con- 
demned from its birth as a member of an unclean caste. 
But, from the point of view of practical morality, this 
identification of the child with the sin of its parents is 
wholly unjustifiable. 

The urgent duty that rests upon us all is the duty of 
taking action to prevent the penalty for the sin of illegiti- 
mate parentage being paid by the child. 

It is common sense, after all. 

We have to remember that the birth of every child — 
and it matters not at all whether the birth is legal or ille- 
gal — is always the introduction of a new individual into the 
community. Birth is not a personal fact only, but a social 
fact, in which the State cannot fail to be concerned. 

The effect in increasing the infantile death-rate and the 
misery caused in physical and mental unfitness in the chil- 
dren who survive, are the result of our blind action. This 
is what we have to change. For it is such social waste that 



^62 MOTHERHOOD 

makes our cruel bastardy laws so absurd. After all, you 
cannot go on indefinitely encouraging the production of 
wastrels. It is the practical question of health and social 
well-being that we need to consider in reforming our laws. 

The practical aspects of the question are serious. Ille- 
gitimacy has a far closer relation than is generally under- 
stood to the racial wastage which it helps to feed. Cer- 
tainly it looms large as a factor in social disintegration — 
in the degeneration which leads to the streets and to the 
prison, and the ever-increasing hosts of the submerged. 
The Minority Report of the Royal Commissioners on the 
Poor Law 1909, for instance, estimates (no definite statis- 
tics having been kept !) that in the United Kingdom in each 
year are born over 15,000 children in the Poor Law insti- 
tutions, and of these 30 per cent, are legitimate and 70 per 
cent, illegitimate. The yearly harvest of these shame- 
branded children appears almost incredibly great. Roughly 
estimating, in Great Britain (excluding Ireland) there are 
50,000 illegitimate births in each year — ^that is to say, 
about one million of these children are born in this land in a 
single generation. Nor is this all. In England, unfortu- 
nately, still-born births are not required to be registered; 
were these recorded the illegitimate birth-rate would be 
much higher than the present statistics show. In those 
countries where the records are kept, the number of still- 
born illegitimate births is always higher than it is for chil- 
dren born under the protection of marriage. 

And to this vast host of helpless children we, in this land, 
give almost no protection. In the English law they have 
no father. They are filii nullius — nobody's children ; with- 
out kin; they have no rights of inheritance. All through 
life they are branded. The child in England is not legiti- 
mised even on the subsequent marriage of its parents. In 



THE Ul^MARRIED MOTHER 263 

Scotland this injustice is not found. The illegitimate 
child becomes legitimate by the simple and natural process 
of its father marrying its mother. Can the cruelty of our 
English law have any positive value? It is difficult to 
think so. Aside from sentimentality, aside even from the 
value or worthlessness of punitive measures, here is a law 
that stands as a direct obstacle against right and responsi- 
ble conduct. 

And what is the result ? The infant mortality rate, high 
as it is for the children of married parents, is doubled 
and more than doubled in the case of illegitimate children. 
Three times as many children born out of wedlock die 
before reaching adolescence, as compared with those chil- 
dren born under the protection of the law. Think just a 
little of the real significance of this alarmingly high infant 
death-rate; these tell-tale figures are the proof of our 
failure. Do they not speak of a waste of infant life which, 
if for practical reasons only, we cannot suffer to go on.^^ 
This fact of England's need for children should drive us 
on to action. Here, as in many other cases of indifference, 
we have failed to recognise that life — the one thing with- 
out which all else must perish — has been slipping from us 
by our carelessness, in a way that threatens the whole 
future and well-being of our race. 

In many towns in England the illegitimate death-rate 
of infants under one year has increased, and still is increas- 
ing to an extent that ought to give alarm. In London 
the illegitimate infant death-rate is more than twice as high 
as the legitimate. The exact figures vary in different 
boroughs : thus in Poplar the number of legitimate infant 
deaths per thousand is 121.5 as against 281.24 illegitimate, 
whereas Wandsworth has 97 as the death-rate of legitimate 
children and 276 for illegitimate. In the city of Man- 



264 MOTHERHOOD 

Chester, where the death-rate of legitimates is 169, that of 
illegitimates is 362. In one division (Clayton) it is 583, 
in another (Blacklej) it is as high as 667. Bristol, again, 
has a legitimate death-rate of 124 per thousand and an 
illegitimate of 349; Leicester, 130 against 377; Cardiff, 
124 against 349 ; while Cambridge, with a legitimate death- 
rate as low as 81 per thousand, has an illegitimate rate 
of 276. 

The meaning of these figures is plain: the unmarried 
mother cannot give proper care to her child, as a rule she 
cannot feed it, and, deprived of its natural nourishment, it 
is more likely to die, and, if it lives, it will be less strong 
to meet life. This is proved by the vital statistics, which 
show that the illegitimate babies, unlike legitimate babies, 
are not stricken with death in the first week of infant life ; 
they die more frequently in the second month than in the 
first, and more frequently in the third than in the second 
month. Illegitimates at birth are equal to legitimate chil- 
dren; indeed, from these statistics they would seem to be 
born stronger. It is evident that the high death-rate among 
them is caused only by defective nutrition and want of suffi- 
cient care. In other words, these children are killed need- 
lessly by our neglect. For the sin of their deaths rests 
upon each and all of us, until we rise up and refuse to 
accept conditions that permit children to be born only to 
die. 

And while you grasp the offence of these facts, do not 
be consoled by thinking that this open infantile slaughter 
is the only or indeed the greatest, evil that follows from our 
indifference. No statistics can do more than shadow the 
extent of the wrong; motherhood brought to despair — 
the child-murders that fortunately remain hidden, the 
secret abortions, the concealed births, the still-born children 



THE U]<MARRIED MOTHER 265 

who might have been born ahve. We have suffered these 
things. But it is the race that pays and rots ; the penalty 
for our sins of neglect is paid by these innocent little ones. 

Let me at this place insert a brief digression to point 
out one particular that it is very necessary for us to 
remember. There are many types among these unmarried 
mothers, as many as there are among married women ; and 
some would be good mothers did we allow them the oppor- 
tunity, others would not be good mothers under any cir- 
cumstances, because they are weak in character and are 
incapable of maternal sacrifice. Now, the problem of the 
saving of the child is quite a separate one in these oppo- 
site cases: in the one instance everything ought to be done 
to keep the child with its mother, in the other the one safe- 
guard is to keep the child wholly out of the mother's 
power. 

I will give the reader four cases from my own knowledge 
to make this fact clearer; they will, I believe, speak more 
forcibly than any mere statement of my own opinion. 

The first case shows illegitimacy at its very lowest — 
motherhood made a crime. The facts were told to me by a 
doctor friend on whose word I can rely absolutely. A 
company of five or six men were gathered in some out- 
buildings of a country farm, among them was one who 
was half-witted. In an adjoining barn was a girl, also 
half-witted. The men joked one with another; a bet was 
made, and the half-witted man was sent to seek the girl. 
This he did, and as the result of this hideous act a child 
was born and lived. I dp not know what became of it. 

In the second case also the woman was quite unfitted 
to be a mother, though her character and the circumstances 
were as different as possible. This time the mother was 
highly born and educated. Though I knew her fairly well. 



me MOTHERHOOD 

I was unacquainted with her family history, which prob- 
ably would show many features of great interest. She was 
of neurotic temperament, and belonged to the type I have 
classed as the siren woman. She had several lovers, as she 
was strongly sexual. By one of these men, and by mistake, 
a child was born. The father refused to accept the respon- 
sibilities of his fatherhood, though he did not deny that the 
child was his. The mother also had no love for it, and the 
little one would have been neglected and probably would 
have died. But, when about two months old, the child was 
taken from its mother and cared for and most tenderly 
loved by one of the woman's lovers. He left her, as her 
indifference to her child killed his affection, but he took her 
child to bring up as his own son. 

The third case is more usual, and shows us illegitimacy 
as it most commonly occurs. The events happened in 
the north of England, where once I lived. The girl was 
well known to me. She was of respectable parentage, and 
very beautiful ; she would have made a good mother. The 
father did not live in the same village, and I did not know 
him; but I heard he was young and strong; he was the 
gardener at the place where the girl was servant ; probably 
the child would have been healthy. But the girl was sent 
from her situation as soon as her condition was known to 
her Christian (!) mistress; later she was driven from her 
home by her fanatically religious ( !) father. Thus 
hounded to death and to crime she sought refuge in a dis- 
used quarry ; she was there for two days without food. 
It was winter. When we found her, her child had been born 
and was dead. Afterwards the girl went mad.^ 

I will add no comment, because I feel quite unable to 
write calmly. I can only record my belief that under a 

II related this incident first in The Truth about Woman, p. 347. 



THE UNMARRIED MOTHER ^67 

more moral public opinion and saner social organisa- 
tion such crimes of mothers against their children would 
be impossible. Infanticide is committed always, I believe, 
under the biting pressure of want and despair. 

The last case is in sharp contrast with all the others, and 
shows responsible motherhood outside of marriage. The 
woman here is strong and passionate and deeply maternal, 
but, unable to marry the man she loves, because he is mar- 
ried already, but to a woman who has no desire to be a 
mother, she chooses, therefore, to bear his child. I know 
several similar unions. Some of these have been temporary, 
some have lasted, but in each case the woman has had 
strength of character and a social position which have 
made it practicable for her thus to assert her right to 
motherhood. Such cases we may leave alone. I do not 
think any one of us should condemn such action. The 
immense pity is that women of this strong maternal type 
should by any cause be kept from marriage. They are 
the fittest wives and mothers. 

The relation between marriage and illegitimacy is a very 
close one ; any cause that hinders early marriage must tend 
to encourage the increase of illegal unions.^ 

1 Very interesting statistics in this connection are given in an 
admirable monograph by Dr. Max Marcuse, Uneheliche Mutter 
(Berlin, 1907, vol. xxvii. of the Documents of Great Towns, edited 
by Hans Ostwald). 

Marriages Illegitimate births 

per 1000. per 1000. 

187G 8.5 8.6 

1877 8.0 8.7 

1878 7.7 8.7 

1879 ^ 7.5 8.8 

Taken from Jahrbuch fur das deutsche Reich. This table clearly 
shows a steady increase in the illegitimate birth-rate in direct pro- 
portion to the decline in the number of marriages. 

In Bavaria, again, up to the year 1868, the parishes (Gemeinden) 
held a power of veto over all wage-earners desiring to marry. In 
1868 most of these restrictions were abolished, and at once the il- 
legitimate births dropped 12.6 per cent. 



268 MOTHERHOOD 

The question is, however, a very difficult one. And I am 
not fully convinced of the wisdom of permanent marriage 
being undertaken at so young an age that chance births 
would be prevented ; at any rate, the danger would be great 
until our young women and young men are more sanely 
educated in sex. The young have very little understand- 
ing of their own need, and no experience of life ; and for 
this reason a way might be opened up that, after marriage, 
would lead to even more harmful looseness of conduct. 
Already numerous illegitimate births are the result of un- 
happy marriages. This happens, perhaps, most frequently 
among the working classes, though I am not sure, and it 
may be only that among them the facts of such births are 
more openly known. The fear of another child to the too- 
hard- worked mother is often very great, and this (when the 
means to prevent conception are not known) causes her to 
refuse to have intercourse with her husband, which all too 
freqeuently sends him to another woman. 

Unmarried mothers are overwhelmingly preponderant 
among the economically weak, in particular, among servant 
girls, factory workers, laundry hands, waitresses, and all 
classes of day workers. This does not necessarily prove 
greater looseness of conduct among these classes, and the 
more numerous illegitimate births are, of course, explained 
to a great extent by the fact that among the better- 
educated girls means to prevent conception are used; ille- 
gitimate births are also very frequently hidden. This, in 
particular, happens where both parents belong to the 
upper classes of society. It is also frequent with the gen- 
tleman father and the mother of a lower social class. 

And here, before I go further, I must again give warn- 
ing against the over-hasty view, that men and their uncon- 



THE UI^fMARRIED MOTHER 269 

trolled passions are alone responsible. This opinion, once 
held by me in common with most women, I have been com- 
pelled to give up. Seduction cannot, I believe, be ac- 
cepted, without very great caution, as the chief cause of 
illegitimate births. It is so comfortable to place the sins 
of sex on men's passions. But I doubt very much if any 
woman can be made a mother against her own will. I am 
inclined to believe that excitement and escape from dulness, 
as also the joy in receiving presents, are the principal mo- 
tives that at first lead girls into illegal relations.-*^ 

We find that paternity is acknowledged most frequently 
in those cases where the father belongs to a lower social 
level, where he loses less by open behaviour. In these 
classes the man, unless prevented by a pre-existing tie, 
usually marries the mother at a later period, and he does 
not despise her. The woman's sin is not as a rule taken 
too tragically. If the father of her child does not marry 
her, it is quite possible for her to find another husband, 
w^ho, as a rule, acts as a father to her love-child. For these 
reasons the least moral and economic dangers, alike to the 
child and its mother, occur when both the father and the 
mother belong to the working classes. This is not, however, 
always true. 

The whole question is a difficult one ; the further we 
inquire, the more strongly does this appear. We learn that 
there is no one type of the unmarried mother, no one cause 
of the evil of illegitimacy, no one remedy that will cure it. 
We cannot wisely be too hopeful. But this is not an excuse 
for our indifference. Our system of ignoring this question 
and of forcing the unmarried mother into shame, with its 

1 The reader is referred to the chapter on "Prostitution" in The 
Truth about Woman. 



270 MOTHERHOOD 

incredible sliort-sightedness and culpable lack of help and 
discrimination, is proved out-of-date, because we now know 
that it is useless. It does not prevent illegitimate births, 
for no law can change the sexual nature of men and 
women. As things stand with us at present, honourable or 
even decent conduct in illegal sexual relationships has a 
poor chance of being cultivated ; but those who realise that 
this is the case are still very few. 

It is because I have come to realise this that I have 
urged, with all the power I have, an open recognition of 
these hidden relationships as the only way to save them 
from disgrace and shame. I hope to have made it clear 
that I am not thinking of lessening responsibility in ask- 
ing for a change in our law. I am not at all advocating 
any sentimental legislation; we have had quite enough of 
that. It is an intelligent insight that considers causes and 
their effects that we need to-day in the administration of 
our laws. 

All thinkers are coming to see the waste of the old sys- 
tem. The modern tendency is to place remedy in lieu of 
punishment. Thus, we need scarcely doubt that we are 
approaching the acceptance of a more truly moral code, 
based on the need of protection for the child. 

It is this, and this alone, that should guide us in the 
reform of our laws. The life of every child must be safe- 
guarded, not on sentimental or even on ethical grounds, 
but for the sake of the health and efficiency of our race. 
This practical morality is what we need. The State must 
have healthy children, and by any negligence in working 
to this end it inflicts serious charges upon itself, and at 
the same time dangerously impairs its efficiency in the 
future. The nationalisation of healthy children is of much 



THE U>fMARRIED MOTHER 271 

greater importance than the nationalisation of educa- 
tion. 

It has needed the castastrophe of War to force upon 
modem States a just recognition of their obligations to 
motherhood and the child-life upon which their very exis- 
tence depends. To a surprising and gratifying degree the 
position of the illegitimate child is being discussed in all 
countries, and practical remedies are being found for some 
of the worst evils, by associations for the protection of 
motherhood and by changes in the law. Much wise legis- 
lation already has been passed by progessive States. 

Among ourselves, however, little has as yet been done.^ 

Why is this ? I know that reforms that matter are not easy 

to make. Our legislators seem to me as blind fighters, 

dealing blows that sometimes hit the mark by chance, but 

more usually miss it. The difficulty of bringing about 

any change in our laws is certainly very great, for respect 

of the law^ is, perhaps, the guiding principle of English 

life. So far any movement towards reform has been in 

the hands of private individuals, and only the few have 

cared at all. And there the matter rests, and there it will 

rest, until our politicians are by us driven into action. It 

is this for which I am hoping. For I do not believe that 

great changes in things that really matter are often 

brought about by Acts of Parliament. Parliament may 

register the reforms, may try to modify or check them; 

it does not create them. It is public opinion that does this. 

When we really care for the injustice with which we treat 

the illegitimate child, our bastardy laws will be changed. 

Till then we shall go on as we have done, enunciating moral 

1 By the Affiliation Order Act, 1914, two important changes in 
the law were gained (see p. 276), but little has been done in com- 
parison with the wise changes made in other States. 



272 MOTHERHOOD 

platitudes in which few of us believe and raising sentimental 
limitations, but we shall be content to muddle on, careless of 
the evils we are sowing by our carelessness/ 

Yet I do not despair; a change is coming. The wide- 
spread interest, and also the more practical and moral view 
taken by the majority of people, during the agitation on 
the supposed existence of the "war-babies," were to me a 
very hopeful sign. It is true the agitation was short-lived : 
soon we were told it was unnecessary. Nothing was done. 
The lesson must be driven deeper and then public opinion 
will awaken to the knowledge that the conditions causing 
illegitimacy and its disasters are present in times of peace 
as well as in times of war. 

In the meantime, it may be salutary for us to know the 
action that other countries are taking in this question. 
Certainly we have much to learn. Our law, in this matter 
of protection for the unmarried mother and maintenance 
for her child, lags far behind that of other countries, and 
is one example only, out of many, of our hidebound attach- 
ment to ancient abuses. 

For the most enlightened legislative advances we have to 
look to Scandinavia, the birth-land of Ellen Key. Surely 
it is due to her beneficent influence that the position of the 
bastard child and its mother has been faced with a quite 

iln this connection the reader is referred to a statement made 
in the Report of the Boyal Commission of Venereal Diseases (p. 17), 
with regard to "the high prevalence of syphilis among unmarried 
mothers." An examination made by Dr. Mott as to the presence 
of syphilis in poor unmarried and working-class married women 
found that among the former 27.6 per cent, of the mothers were 
infected, while for the married the percentage was as low as Q.Q. 
The Report states: "The tests in the above cases were carefully 
carried out, and the results, although based on too few cases to 
justify sweeping generalisations, must be regarded as extremely 
significant." See also the next chapter, "The Dangers of Sexual 
Diseases." 



THE Ul^MARRIED MOTHER 273 

new practical efficiency ; and as a result constructive legis- 
lation has been wisely undertaken, which will fix the rights 
of the illegitimate child and enforce responsible conduct 
upon both its parents. 

In Norway a bill, prepared by the Department of Jus- 
tice, was laid before the Storthing in 1909, "whose simple 
but revolutionary intention was to give every child two 
parents. It aimed to equalise illegitimate children and 
legitimate children before the law : that is, to give the ille- 
gitimate child the right to a father." '^ This bill, as one 
might expect, met with opposition ; it was adopted as law 
only in 1915. 

I wish it were possible for me to give in detail all the 
bill's wise enactments. Even its title. Law Concerning 
Children Whose Parents Have Not Married Each Other, 
is significant. The unjust stigma "illegitimate," as applied 
to the innocent child, has been discarded. This gives the 
clue to the intention of the bill. It is concerned (1) with 
the welfare of the child, saving it from social disgrace and 
the position of legal disadvantage which hitherto has been 
the lot of half-parented children; (2) with the fixing of 
both parents' responsibilities, so that no man or woman may 
escape the results of their sexual acts. 

Undeniably here is a law that at once is moral as well 
as practical in its aims. And the double accomplishment 
is not so difficult as might at first thought appear. No 
cumbersome rules are laid down, difficult of application and 
likely to fail in their working ; indeed, what most impresses 
one is the obvious simple common sense of these measures. 

1 Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia, by Katharine Anthony. 
This interesting little book gives a full account of the splendid 
Norwegian bill, as well as considerable information on other matters 
connected with the unmarried mother. 



274 MOTHERHOOD 

Were I younger, I should feel sure that now Norway has 
shown us so splendidly what to do in this matter, and how 
easily right can be done, England and all other countries 
would hasten to act in prompt and glad imitation ; but life 
has taught me that it is just the very simple things to right 
what is wrong that as a rule we never do. 

Let us glance at the Norwegian bill. I can give only the 
briefest summary of its principal clauses. 

(1) A child whose parents have not married each other 

has a right to the surname of its father. 

(2) The child is entitled to demand from both his 

parents adequate support and education. The 
amount to be contributed by each parent for 
support to be dependent on the economic position 
of the father and to be decided by the authority 
appointed for that purpose. The cost of the 
child's education to be borne as far as possible by 
both parents. 

(3) On the death of the parents, the child to have full 

rights of inheritance. 

By these means the child born without the protection 
of marriage is given special protection by the law, so that 
in general his position is the same as that of the legitimate 
child. And in this way the child is saved, while the parents 
are punished for their careless sin in the one wise way, by 
forcing them to undertake the same responsibilities they 
would have had to fulfil to their child if they had not acted 
illegitimately. 

But more even than this is necessary; the child must be 
saved for healthy life before birth, as well as being main- 
tained and educated after it is born, and this can be done 



THE UNMARRIED MOTHER 275 

only by taking care of the mother. The Norwegian bill, 
therefore, provides for this to be done ; the father is to bear 
his right share of the responsibilities of the birth. 

Thus, the man has to pay the expenses of the woman's 
confinement; his obligations in this respect extending to 
providing maintenance during three months of pregnancy 
and six weeks following confinement, which maintenance 
may be extended to a period of nine months if the mofher 
keeps the child with her and nurses it for that length of 
time. 

But the most revolutionary clause of the bill relates to 
those cases where, owing to the loose character of the 
mother, or for other reasons, paternity cannot be fixed. 
The promoters of the bill, knowing that it is just these 
children who most need protection, has provided for their 
fatherhood in the following simple, but wise, manner: 
Where it is not possible to fix with certainty the man who 
is the begetter of the child, the responsibilities and obliga- 
tions of the father shall rest upon any man who has had sex 
relations with the mother at such a time that in the course 
of nature he might be the father of her child. In those 
cases where several men have had intercourse about the 
same time with the mother, then each of them will be ac- 
counted, in part, as the father, and must contribute to the 
child's support, the amount to be paid by each to be deter- 
mined by the authority prescribed. And the same rule will 
hold with regard to the confinement expenses of the mother. 

It would be difficult to over-emphasise the far-reaching 
effects of such an enactment. So far the plea, "There 
were others," what the law calls the exceptio plurium, has 
served to free men from all the responsibility for irregular 
connections. Under the Scandinavian law there is now no 



276 MOTHERHOOD 

such way of escape. Anonymous parenthood at last is 
recognised as a crime against society. The only plea now 
allowed in Norway to any man is that he has had no sexual 
intercourse with the mother, otherwise he becomes liable for 
the child's support, which he may have to bear alone or in 
partnership with other men who are also adjudged to be 
possible fathers. Here is a law to re-establish the father's 
responsibility. It also closes one of the widest doors where- 
by profligacy has been made easy. Casual and transient 
unions will no longer be able to be entered into without any 
thought of the consequences. 

Is an act of such clear morality as this one impossible 
for us in England? I fear that at present it is. 

What, then, have we done in this Christian land for the 
unmarried mother and her child? It is little enough that 
hitherto has been held to be necessary. The father, if he 
can be caught and his paternity proved, may be compelled 
to pay a fev/ shillings weekly to the mother for aliment. 
Under no circumstances can he be made to pay more than 
five shillings ; this sum is deemed to be sufiicient whatever 
his financial or social status. Moreover, the payments for 
the child cease when it reaches the age of sixteen ; and the 
law makes no provision that the child must be trained for 
a livelihood. No help whatever is claimed to ensure for 
the mother proper conditions during her confinement and 
the necessary rest before and afterwards to enable her to 
nurse her child. Further trouble arises for the mother 
from the costs and difficulties of the law. Improvements 
have of late been made in this respect ; but much more waits 
to be done.^ The difficulties that have hindered moral and 

1 By the A^liation Order Act of 1914, two important changes in 
the law were gained — 



THE UNMARRIED MOTHER 277 

responsible conduct are really little short of comic. It 
would seem that the obj ect of our bastardy laws was rather 
to protect the father and to render profligacy easy than to 
aid the child or its mother. I ask, Is this justice? Is it 
even common sense.? 

One plain result is that a small percentage only — it is 
stated by some to be as low as five per cent. — of unmarried 
mothers ever apply to establish paternity and claim ali- 
mony from the man. It is much easier for the woman to 
go on to the streets ; the army of prostitutes every year 
is recruited by many thousands of these girls. The pun- 
ishment for the sin of an illegitimate birth falls on one 
partner in the act ; the man escapes his payment. 

The barriers that have been placed in the path of the 
unmarried mother afford certain proof of how greatly we 
are in need of further changes in the law. These should 
be made at once. Other countries are realising this and 
are not failing to act. Take, for instance, the lands of 
our Allies, where, in France, action at last has been taken 
regarding the famous Napoleonic edict. La recherche de 
la pat emit e est interdite. In 1913 this prohibition was 
quietly expunged ; and, in certain cases, the child born out 
of wedlock now has the right to its father's name and na- 
tionality, and to half the property which would have de- 
scended by law to a legitimate child. Again, a law has 
just recently been passed by the Russian Duma by which 



(1) The compulsory interval of six days (a period which gave 

the man opportunity, to escape) between the summons and 
the appearance in court of the putative father was abolished. 

(2) The amount of the affiliation order was made payable through 

an official of the court (formerly it was left to the woman 
to collect the money), who has power, with the consent of 
the woman, to take action in case of non-payment. 



^78 MOTHERHOOD 

the father of an illegitimate child is made responsible for 
the birth: he must keep the mother until such time as 
she is fit to earn her own living. 

In Australia, where women possess a larger share than 
elsewhere in making and administering the law, much prac- 
tical attention has been given to these matters and a num- 
ber of reforms have been made which act directly in helping 
the child. Thus, in South Australia, paternity may be 
proved by the mother before the birth of the child; when 
this is done, the father must furnish security, by order of 
a magistrate, that he will find lodging for the mother for 
one month before and one month after her confinement, as 
well as pay the doctor and the nurse, and provide clothing 
for the child. After the child is born, the father pays a 
weekly sum, at the decision of the magistrate, to the mother 
for its maintenance. Children are legitimised on the mar- 
riage of their parents. In New Zealand (again a land 
where women's influence is strong) an illegitimate child is 
now registered in the name of the father, where paternity 
is proved. 

Changes in the law, all favourable to the legal position 
of the child, have been made in Denmark, in Sweden, and 
in Switzerland. In this last country the bastard has all 
the rights of a child born in marriage, when once paternity 
has been recognised. And if the mother fails to find the 
father, the child himself, or his guardian, can take pro- 
ceedings. A similar law, recently enacted, is now in force 
in Sweden : in Denmark the father supports the child up to 
the age of eighteen; he provides for the mother for one 
month before and one month after the birth of the child. 
The money for such help is paid to the mother by the au- 
thorities, and is afterwards claimed by them from the 



THE UNMARRIED MOTHER 279 

father. This may seem of small importance, yet it is our 
carelessness in such details that, in great measure, causes 
the utter futility of our laws. 

I would ask you to consider very carefully these differ- 
ent wise and practical measures. Do they not show more 
common sense than our methods.? Are they not more in 
line with the modem spirit- — the spirit, that is, of intelli- 
gent seeking for the advantage of the child .^^ And here 'at 
length do we not see the way that in the future may lead 
us to more moral action and greater justice in the framing 
of our IsLWs? A wider knowledge has grown with our in- 
quiry and an understanding of what we have to do. 

The welfare of the child is the one consideration that 
matters. 

I must drive this fact home again, even though I risk 
wearying my readers with repetition : our present immoral 
laws are practically equivalent to freeing the man from his 
obligations as a father; they drive unmarried mothers to 
death and prostitution; they are the direct cause of in- 
fanticide. Again I would urge practical and prompt ac- 
tion, which alone can bring us nearer to moral conduct 
by making responsibility a necessary condition of all sex- 
ual relationships, however carelessly and transiently they 
are entered into. 

First, and I think most important of all, the law should 
take notice of the desire of the parents. In all cases where 
parenthood is acknowledged openly by the father as well 
as by the mother, and guarantees are given that the duties 
of the parents will be fulfilled, the child should be legiti- 
mised, receive the name of the father and be qualified to 
inherit from him, even if the parents are unable, or do not 
wish, to marry. This opportunity of right conduct once 



280 MOTHERHOOD 

given to the parents by the law, I believe that many men 
would voluntarily take this course and gladly acknowledge 
their fatherhood. 

In all other cases in which paternity is not voluntarily 
acknowledged I take the first and most important duty of 
the law to be the appointment of guardians. I believe that 
nothing else is quite so urgently needed to safeguard the 
fatherless little one. I do not think the illegitimate chilcf 
safely can be left without supervision in the care of its 
mother. Those who talk here of the mother's right to her 
child are being misled by sentiment. These mothers are, as 
a rule, incapable of giving adequate care or any form of 
training to their children. I would go further than this 
and say that, in entering into such a union with a man, 
and thus depriving their child of a father willing to ac- 
knowledge his fatherhood, they have proved already their 
unfitness for motherhood. But this is not to say that the 
mothers must be punished, rather it is the more necessary 
that they must be helped, supported, and guarded, just be- 
cause of and in proportion to their weakness, for this is 
the only way of salvation for the child. And, for this 
reason, the law, as it affects the unmarried mother, must 
be made easier in its working. All artificial difficulties pre- 
venting the mother from obtaining alimony must be re- 
moved. No longer should the law make it easy for any 
man to escape his sexual responsibilities. It is immoral to 
countenance laws that make profligacy easy. 

We must, therefore, claim — 

(1) The removal of the present limit of the father's 
payment to "an amount not exceeding 5s. per 
week." The alimony paid should vary according 



THE UNMARRIED MOTHER 281 

to the means and social status of the father: in 
all cases it should include some kind of training 
to enable the child to earn its own living; until 
that time the payments of the father should con- 
tinue. And if the child should be physically or 
mentally deficient, so as to be unable to support 
itself, the father must continue his aid for all 
its life. 

(2) A further charge should be made upon the man for 

the support of the mother for a period, certainly 
not less than one month before and three months 
after the birth of the child. He should be com- 
pelled to pay for a doctor and a nurse for the 
mother, and provide clothes for the child. 

(3) The father's responsibility should be truly recog- 

nised so that, if the mother is driven to commit 
any deed of violence against the child, he must 
be held accountable with her and punished, 
should he have known of her condition and re- 
fused to help her. 

(4) In the case of the death of the mother, it should 

be possible to bring an order against the father 
or the supposed father. The mortality in child- 
bed in these cases is much higher than among 
married women, and it is clearly^ unfair that the 
mother's death should leave the child unpro- 
tected, without any power on the part of its 
guardians to compel the father to fulfil his par- 
ental responsibilities. 

(5) The father against whom an order has been made 

must be prevented from leaving the country un- 
less he has first paid a sum sufficient to discharge 



282 MOTHERHOOD 

his obligations or has made suitable arrangements 
for payments during his absence. 

Probably all these conditions could better be secured if 
paternity was proved before, instead of after, the birth 
of the child. Registration on the part of the woman at 
the time of conception would be the best way to prevent 
the crime of anonymous paternity. 

There is much more that ought to be done. We shall 
still be far behind the reforms of Norway. But the carry- 
ing out of even these simple demands will lead us a great 
step forward in practical morality. Can we, I ask myself, 
who in this twentieth century no longer are quite ignorant 
as to the factors that act in the making of fit citizens, who 
know that of all causes tending towards degeneracy, bad 
ante-natal and early life conditions are the greatest, can 
we pursue our policy of carelessness as if this knowledge 
were not ours.? A recognition of the claims of the child is 
being forced home by our need. No longer can we afford 
to be careless of the life of the future. A new sense of 
our responsibility — a responsibility not to punish sin, but 
to prevent sin — is surely dawning on our social conscience. 
And as soon as we understand, we must hasten to reform 
our inhuman bastardy laws. 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XIII 

THE DANGER OF SECRET DISEASES 

Extent of the evil — Why these diseases are not treated — Need for 
secrecy prevents those afflicted from obtaining the best treatment 
— Recommendations of the Royal Commission — Enlightened in- 
terest in the subject needed — Desire to punish men prevents wise 
action — If men fear to tell the truth they are more likely to 
infect their wives — Three attitudes towards the evil — Bad effects 
on both boys and girls of too romantic views of love — Woman 
often to blame for cleavage between husband and wife — The 
wife's responsibility for the husband's unfaithfulness — The art 
of love — Certain reflections, 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE DANGER OF SECRET DISEASES 

"The abolition of prostitution and the suppression of venereal dis- 
eases would be almost tantamount to the solution of the entire sexual 
problem." — Iwax Bloch. 

So far in writing of marriage and of the irregular part- 
nerships entered into outside of marriage I have ignored 
the question of venereal diseases and of prostitution, so in- 
timately connected with them, but to continue to do this 
would be to make my inquiry useless, as, properly speak- 
ing, they constitute the central problem of the sexual rela- 
tionships. There are no other factors of the same im- 
portance to motherhood and to the life and health of the 
race. 

Without doubt the subject is eminently complicated, while 
the problems involved are so immense, far-reaching and 
perilous, linking themselves with the deepest interests of 
the race, that I hesitate almost in making an attempt to 
discuss so wide a subject briefly, and necessarily inade- 
quately^, in the short space at my disposal. Yet it is 
clearly impossible to take the easy way and pass these mat- 
ters over in silence. 

On the question of prostitution I have written already in 
my earlier book. The Truth about Woman, where I stated 
as truthfully as I could some facts I had come to know 
about the prostitute class, as well as my own opinions on 
this very complex social phenomenon. I shall, therefore, 
now as far as possible leave this side of the problem with- 

^5 



286 MOTHERHOOD 

out further comment. It must, however, be remembered 
that the problem of prostitution and the problem of vene- 
real diseases are inseparably interconnected, the former 
evil being the chief cause of the latter. Indeed, if pros- 
titution could be ended venereal diseases would of them- 
selves disappear. 

And here we touch at once the grave difficulty of the 
position. These diseases are set apart from all other sick- 
nesses of our bodies. Moral considerations become con- 
fused with practical values. I do not see that this in itself 
can be wrong. For there can be no greater ideal than 
that of removing the poisonous sting that with such abun- 
dant activity has worked evil in our midst. 

There is, however, danger in too much and wrongly di- 
rected moral enthusiasm. It is of vital importance that a 
contagious disease should be isolated and cured, and if 
moral condemnation acts to defeat these objects, it cannot 
but be a danger. A contagious disease that must be kept 
secret cannot be properly dealt with and healed. 

I hope I made my own position clear when I wrote on 
prostitution, where I tried to avoid a purely moral and 
idealistic treatment of the subject."'^ I shall follow the same 
plan here. I shall limit myself to the aspects of the ques- 
tion that to me seem to be of special importance, choosing 
by preference facts about which I have some little personal 
knowledge, or a fixed opinion of my own. In this way I 
may be able to contribute a word or two of worth to this 
difficult question. 

The Report of the Royal Commission on Venereal Dis- 
ease brought the subject before a reluctant and apathetic 
public. It was time. According to the Commission one- 
1 The Truth about Woman, pp. 359-374. 



THE DANGER OF SECRET DISEASES 287 

tenth of the city population is infected by syphilis. The 
number of those affected by gonorrhoea is much larger. 
The latter disease is the more terribly injurious to women 
and children, because it is often considered a triviality by 
men. Syphilis serves as the origin of many functional and 
organic diseases, and its hereditary influence is truly dis- 
astrous. Blindness, deafness and insanity, as well as a 
weakened nervous resistance, are the inheritance handed 
to the children of the syphilitic. Gonorrhoea is the chief 
source of sterility in women, probably accounting for one- 
half of all cases. 

At a time when infant life is of such supreme value to 
the nation as it is to-day, it is impossible to exaggerate 
the importance of these facts. We have to realise that could 
we act strongly and wisely so that in one generation we 
grappled with this great evil and cured it, we could make 
good the suffering and waste of life caused by the war. 

Is it not worth while to do this ^ It can be done. There 
was a time when syphilis did not exist in our civilisation. 
It cannot be traced with any certainty in Europe before 
the fifteenth century, although its origin is involved in some 
controversy. The attempt to suppress venereal diseases by 
proper treatment is of less than twelve years' duration. 
Three men — ^Wassermann, Ehrlich and Noguchi — have 
supplied the knowledge and given the means whereby the 
evil may be attacked. Up to the present little use has been 
made of the effective means of diagnosis and cure that we 
now possess. The cure has been left to private doctors. 
No general hospital would treat these diseases, and the spe- 
cial hospitals are few in number. Benefit societies and in- 
surance commissioners have refused to grant the usual 
benefits to patients suffering from these diseases. The in- 



288 MOTHERHOOD 

oculations are very expensive, and many patients, even 
among the wealthy, have not used them, as they have feared 
to discover the truth. The desire for concealment has done 
everything to make cure difficult. 

I must emphasise constantly the danger of secrecy. We 
have to face the facts as they are, not as we wish them to 
be. And for this reason, because the results are what we 
now know them to be, we must demand the clearing away 
of the moral stigma that has been placed as a ban upon 
the infected. It is so plain. Until every one attacked by 
these diseases seeks the best remedies, there can be no cure ; 
and they will not seek the remedies while the presence of the 
diseases is considered as evidence of sin. In the past we 
have relied on fear as a deterrent and ignorance as a safe- 
guard. They have failed. Let us now try practical cures. 
A pharisaic attitude is so highly mischievous that it becomes 
immoral. 

The Government has taken prompt and fine action. It 
has removed one great difficulty, and eff^ected all that can 
be done without fresh legislation. A comprehensive scheme 
of free diagnosis and treatment in general hospitals is to 
be organised by local authorities, who are to receive a grant 
from the Imperial Exchequer amounting to 75 per cent, of 
the cost. It is to be hoped that this admirable action will 
counteract the evils due to the increase of venereal disease 
certain to accompany the war. 

The chief recommendations of the Commission other 
than those connected with direct immediate cure, which 
the Government has been able to carry out by an adminis- 
trative Act, are as follows — 

(1) The presence of infective venereal disease should 



THE DANGER OF SECRET DISEASES S89 

be a cause for the prevention or annulment of marriage; 
further, the process of annulment should be made available 
for all persons, however poor. 

(2) A communication made by a medical practitioner to 
a parent, guardian, or other person directly interested in 
the welfare of a woman or man in order to prevent or de- 
lay marriage with a person in an infectious condition 
should be a "privileged communication." It should not,' in 
such circumstances, be libel or slander to state that an in- 
tending husband cannot safely marry. 

(3) It is further strongly recommended that better m- 
struction be given on sexual subjects. "The evils which 
lead to the spread of venereal diseases are in great part 
due to want of control, ignorance and inexperience, and 
the importance of wisely conceived educational measures 
can hardly be exaggerated." 

There should be no delay in dealing with the last recom- 
mendation. A strong President of the Board of Educa- 
tion could, by an order of his pen, give instruction in an 
afternoon, and start arrangements which could introduce 
such teaching in all schools. It is, however, another mat- 
ter whether there would be teachers capable to give the in- 
struction. It is doubtful also whether sex teaching, intro- 
duced in this way as something apart from the usual edu- 
cational course, could ever safeguard from sin. 

I need, however, say little in this chapter on the im- 
portant and difficult question of sexual education, as the 
whole of the last section of my book deals with that sub- 
ject. I shall there try to show that the greater number of 
the evils connected with marriage and motherhood are due 
to false Ideals and wrong methods of training in early life. 



290 MOTHERHOOD 

I am, in particular, convinced of the mistakes we have been 
making in the education of girls — mistakes which prevent 
them as young women from having any clear aim to guide 
their lives, and act, as I believe, disastrously on their whole 
nature as well as spoiling their happiness. This public 
recommendation for a recognition of the sexual life and 
the problems connected with it as being of vital importance 
in the training of the young generation fills me with strong 
hope. But everything will depend on how such instruc- 
tion is going to be given. Unwisely undertaken, it may 
easily lead to more harm than good. To be really effica- 
cious it will need a sweeping change in the home and a revo- 
lution in the school. Now is the appointed time to act ; if 
the opportunity be allowed to pass, it may not come again. 
The force of tradition and the convention of silence has 
been broken as it has not been broken before. We are all 
convinced that the time to change has come and to do 
something; when so many are agreed upon what ought to 
be done, the danger lies chiefly in the dispersion of energy 
by the weariness brought on by endless discussions on the 
way to give the education — a subject which unfortunately 
lends itself to much talking and disagreement. 

But to return to the Royal Commission Report. Recom- 
mendations (1) and (2) cannot be carried out without 
special legislation. To obtain the support of the House 
of Commons for measures which would necessarily be op- 
posed by some persons in every constituency, which have 
no vote-catching value and have not been chewed to pulp 
by long-continued party platform oratory, is a difficult 
task. The ordinary member of Parliament feels afraid to 
have convictions which are unsupported by powerful or- 
ganisations ; convictions which may cost him much oppo- 



THE DANGER OF SECRET DISEASES 291 

sition at election times. Probably such a measure to safe- 
guard marriage could be more easily initiated by a vigor- 
ous and fearless member of the House of Lords. The 
House of Commons at the present time, even apart from 
the Great War and its urgency, is often busy for months 
with intricate Government measures, which take up nearly 
all the time available. Marriage laws cannot be dealt with 
in half an hour on a Friday evening. 

This need not discourage us too much. It will not serve 
to leave matters to official action alone. If the victory 
against venereal diseases is to be won, strong signs of gen- 
eral interest must be shown. More even than this is neces- 
sary. The interest shown must be of an enlightened char- 
acter. I feel it is urgent to emphasise this need for wise, 
and not hasty, action. Women have of late been taking a 
quite new concern in sexual questions, in particular in vene- 
real diseases, so intimately connected with their interests. 
This is as it should be. But I have been forced to the 
knowledge that this interest, unbacked by wide knowledge 
and still more by experience of the facts of life, often leads 
them into folly. The possession of the vote by women has 
been expected to achieve immediate magical effects ; it has 
been forgotten that women voters would be neither united 
in their aims nor possessed of the political capacity which 
would enable them infallibly to gain all for which they 
wished. Women ought not to hope to solve the ancient, 
fierce enigmas which have vexed mankind in every modern 
civilised society. 

In my opinion, the greatest cause of error in women's 
judgment arises from the tendency (doubtless due to what 
their sex has suffered) to throw the whole blame for sex- 
ual sins on men. Some women carry sex antagonism like 



^92 MOTHERHOOD 

a flag, which they flourish in every wind. These are, of 
course, a small minority; but the majority of women fail 
to take a wide, sane view of both the question of prostitu- 
tion and that of venereal diseases. 

Let me give an illustration. I recently attended a meet- 
ing where a paper was read on the Report of the Venereal 
Disease Commission. The reader of the paper, being a 
woman doctor, took the wise view that the most important 
matter was the cure of the disease. In the discussion that 
followed, it was plainly evident that few of the audience 
agreed with her. These were women who had read about, 
and to some limited extent thought and studied these ques- 
tions. Yet the general view was that the men ought to he 
punished. One speaker, who stated that she was married, 
said that no true woman could or ought to forgive a hus- 
band who had become infected with venereal disease. 

Now, it is this view, here so crudely expressed, that I 
am writing to combat. Such an attitude of blame and 
unf orgiveness has to be changed, or no legislation or pub- 
lic action will effect a real cure. Women are really re- 
sponsible for the secrecy of these diseases. And what is 
the result.? Because these infectious diseases are secret 
they are largely uncured. 

I hasten to say that I am not taking an unfair view of 
the position. It is, of course, easy to understand the at- 
titude taken up by women. Blame is not easily avoided. I 
would, however, ask them very earnestly to consider 
whether there is not some confusion in their minds. 

The sin that the man commits against his wife is being 
unfaithful. Having caught the venereal disease is a mis- 
fortune. The eff^ect must not be blamed by itself. Let me 
illustrate this point of view by considering a diff^erent case. 



THE DANGER OF SECRET DISEASES 293 

Your child gets scarlet fever by an act of direct disobedi- 
ence or sin. He goes to play at a house he lias been for- 
bidden to enter. Would you, because of his sin, refuse to 
pity and nurse him? Rather would you not forget his 
disobedience and desire only to help and to heal him.'' 

Do you see what I mean now.^ It is not that I uphold 
immoral conduct in the husband or in the lover that I plead 
thus for pit}^ and understanding on the part of women. 

Few men are intentionally evil. They do not even act 
foolishly in this question of infectious disease because they 
are wantonly careless. Often they are fully alive to the 
danger that may result to their wives from their own in- 
fection. I repeat they are not necessarily bad men, and 
they may love their wives and children ; but they are cow- 
ards. All men are cowards when it comes to facing their 
wives with their own wrong doings. If they cannot rely 
on the pity of their wives, few men will dare to tell the 
truth. If they cannot tell the truth, they cannot avoid in- 
fecting their wives. This may lead to the birth of infected 
children, and who may say that in this case the crime is 
the man's alone? It is to prevent this crime against the 
child and against life, that I urge upon women a wiser 
and more tolerant attitude. 

For greater clearness, I may state the matter thus : there 
are three attitudes that may be adopted towards sexual 
disease. First, that of the pure moralist, who says only, 
"This is a sin to be punished." On the opposite side is 
the purely utilitarian, who says, "This is only a disease to 
be cured." But both -attitudes may be alike wrong, or, 
more correctly, the truth lies midway between the two. 
The disease, as a disease, needs to be cured. This is the 
first step with which nothing should interfere. But far 



294 MOTHERHOOD 

different and much more complex is the treatment required 
to alter the actions that lead to the disease. 

As a first step, public opinion ought to condemn too late 
marriage, instead of recommending it on economic grounds. 
The mania for making economics the centre of life should 
now surely cease : the falsity of this view has been exposed 
by many great writers, but much stronger is the condem- 
nation that must be given to it by all who can understand 
the evils that it has wrought in our sexual lives. Late 
marriages must be one of the causes contributing to men's 
use of prostitutes before marriage. This subject has been 
dealt with already in Chapter XH. 

A natural division of the subject here presents itself. 
The problems of venereal infection are different before and 
after marriage. A practical knowledge of the physical 
facts of sex should be the possession of every girl some 
years before the age of marriage. Sex must cease to be a 
subject on which it is not decent for a girl to speak. Until 
this has been achieved, it will be impossible to have that 
frankness between lovers which will make certain an ac- 
knowledgment being made of infection, if it is or ever has 
been present in the man, so as to do away with the dangers 
of concealment and further disease. In my opinion, this 
openness is of necessary importance to the wise choice on 
the part of girls of the men they are to marry. 

Our whole attitude towards youth in relation to sex is 
mistaken. And some of our worst mistakes take a direc- 
tion not usually recognised. We often over-emphasise the 
possibilities of romantic love and chivalrous devotion, or 
we leave our children to gain this false attitude from the 
books they read. This is bad for both boys and girls. To 
personify all inspiration and nobility as Woman often but 



THE DANGER OF SECRET DISEASES 295 

acts to make unknown vice attractive to youth. The un- 
known is almost always desirable. It is probable that times 
and places where excessive respect for women has been ex- 
pressed in poetry and romance have been distinguished by 
looseness of sexual habits ; just in the same way and for the 
same reason that extremely vulgar behaviour between the 
sexes is compatible with the strictest physical chastity. 

In the case of girls, the evil that may be done by over- 
exalting romantic love is a different one. To idealise the 
male virtues of courage, adventurousness and self-confi- 
dence comes near, in many cases, to teaching the girls ad- 
miration for the calm, reckless Don Juan. This is the 
man who is likely to have been infected by venereal dis- 
eases. 

In the story of the Beauty and the Beast we have ma- 
terial out of which part of the great sex difficulty can be 
explained. In the fairy story, the husband before mar- 
riage looks like a beast, after marriage he becomes a prince. 
In real life, the story is inverted. There is a deluding 
force in the mere skin and limbs of those of the opposite 
sex at the time when maturity is reached which may give 
princely attributes to those who would be seen as beasts at 
other times. The prince seen as a beast after marriage is 
a tragedy into which the romantic, ignorant girl must be- 
ware of drifting. The man who most boldly plays up to 
the romantic part expected of him — reciprocating to the 
perhaps unconscious encouragement of the girl — is not the 
man who will be the most agreeable to live with. I believe 
there is real danger in the sentimental view of love that is 
common to most girls. They do not know the poverty of 
feeling that loudly expressed sentiment may hide. The 
defect of many unfaithful lovers is not sensuality, but 



^96 MOTHERHOOD 

sentimentality. The lower types of lovers are strangely, 
almost incredibly, sentimental. Such teaching as this 
about the danger of an over-romantic view of love will not 
safeguard from all evils, but it will at least give knowledge 
that may protect in some time of peril. 

The problem of the wife infected by a husband, who 
becomes diseased after marriage, is one that is different and 
more complicated. I have spoken already of the urgent 
need on the part of the wife that she should feel pity for 
the husband, even if she does this as the only means of 
protecting herself and her children. Without this pity, 
men will not dare to tell the truth. And even against their 
judgment and their wish, they will have sexual intercourse 
with their wives to prevent suspicion. 

There is a further question that must be placed before 
women, and it is necessary for me to speak plainly. There 
is a question which I would ask the wife whose husband 
has become infected since marriage with one or other of 
the two forms of venereal disease: What is it that sends 
the man who is married to seek sexual satisfaction with the 
prostitute .f^ It will not do to dismiss this question with the 
old, unreasoning condemnation of the male and his brute 
passions. In the case of the man of average decency, it is 
not deliberate choice that first sends him to dissipation. 

Let us look at the matter a little closer and with greater 
truth. In marriage the woman dominates more often than 
usually is known. She has the children on her side. Un- 
deniably the greatest function of any man in the life of 
the average woman is to be the father of her child. All 
other things that he means to her are secondary to this. 
For this reason, after the birth of her children she fre- 
quently ceases physically to desire her husband. Thus the 



THE DANGER OF SECRET DISEASES 297 

position arises that many husbands, after some years of 
marriage, find themselves in a condition of loneliness in 
their own homes. And the cleavage is wider than the phys- 
ical needs, and extends to the mental and spiritual plains. 
The woman's life is filled with her children; she ceases to 
belong to her husband as completely as he belongs to her. 
She holds back more and more of herself — the vital part 
that he wants. The man feels that he is losing, and, after 
some bluster and conflict, he begins not to care. 

This, I believe, is the history of many marriages that 
started with love. The result in the end is almost certain. 
The lower types of husband from time to time will break 
away and seek distraction in wild love. Other men of more 
refinement will suflPer much more, till they seek to find love 
with some woman in a permanent union outside marriage. 

It may, and I expect will, be said that I am looking at 
this question from the man's side only. This is not because 
I do not feel the woman's position, but because the facts 
I am trying to state are so often neglected, in particular 
by women themselves. Women have been taught to believe, 
and do really feel, that by sexual unfaithfulness a husband 
does them the cruellest possible wrong that a man can do 
to a woman. But is the man ever wholly to be blamed? 
After all, he has given away only what his wife has shown 
him she does not want for herself. Most English wives 
always are acquiescent rather than passionate in the sexual 
embrace. Even when in love they are unresponsive, hiding 
what they feel, and rarely showing their husbands that they 
want them with any real. desire. After a few years of mar- 
riage, his embraces are suffered as a duty. And here I 
would re-state an opinion given in an earlier chapter: I 
do hold that man is by his nature faithful. If he has once 



^98 MOTHERHOOD 

loved a woman, he does not cease to desire her until after 
she has ceased to desire him. 

This brings me to the last question I want to consider. 
Why does the desire of the wife so often cease towards her 
husband? It is a difficult question to answer. One reason 
has been given already in the false attitude of the woman, 
which in so many cases makes her ashamed of expressing 
openly the passion that she feels. Yet there is, I think, 
another and much deeper part of the truth that is fairly 
clear. Each man is able to enforce his sexual desire upon 
his wife at a time when she feels no desire, whereas she can- 
not gain her desire unless he gain his. We may perhaps 
trace back to this cause the feeling of disharmony and wan- 
ing of desire which injures the woman's power to love. Of 
course, this disharmony is not always conscious even to 
herself, and the man is quite unaware of the evil. But his 
acceptance of the woman's subordination, however gladly 
given, does exhaust the passion in her. 

This difference in the power for sexual sacrifice between 
the two sexes is, I have frequently thought, one of the 
gravest causes of our misery. It will take very long to 
overcome it. Only as we advance in refinement and knowl- 
edge of love can this antagonism in the sex act lessen, as 
the woman gains in frankness and the man comes to know 
how to arouse and keep aflame her desire. 

And there is here a question I would put to those hus- 
bands who are suffering to-day from the sexual coldness 
of their wives. I would ask them: Have they taken suf- 
ficient trouble to understand, both on the physical and 
psychical side, the sexual nature of woman, which is much 
more complex and difficult than their own.?^ The art of 
love is not understood by Western people. If we paid 



THE DANGER OF SECRET DISEASES S99 

more attention to this subject marriage would be freed 
from the greatest cause that brings it to disaster. Greater 
openness and sexual confidence between the husband and 
the wife is the first necessary step. But we shall never have 
this until we have rooted out of our moral conscience the 
idea of "the body as the prison of the soul." I have often 
asked myself if this misconception of love is not the real 
cause of all sex trouble. 

And the remedy .^^ Yes, that is the difiicult matter. We 
cannot alter these evils by any cut- and -dried plan. The 
expression of sex is a question of refinement, and its re- 
generation must begin with a movement towards con- 
sciousness. 

It may seem that we have reached no very definite con- 
clusion. We have not solved the problem of venereal dis- 
eases. There is nothing to be gained by denying the dif- 
ficulties that visit us in our sexual lives, or in talking, as 
many do, as though there were an easy way out. There is 
not. 

I hold preaching on all these complicated questions to 
be quite useless. No platitudinous formulae, no recrimina- 
tion of one sex against the other sex, w^ill do any good. 
The wrong is deep down in our attitude towards love, in 
our system of education, and in the very prevalent vul- 
garity of our surroundings. It is there that we must seek 
for it and destroy it. 

I dare to think of a regenera.tion of our sexual lives 
through education and a fuller understanding of the mean- 
ing of love. By education must be understood all that 
influences the desires and imaginations, so that our chil- 
dren shall be turned to seek health and clean living. 

Yet it were unwise to be too hopeful. We cannot be 



300 MOTHERHOOD 

architects of life. Our sons and our daughters will make 
new mistakes, even should they escape our follies. We can 
see a very short way along the path of life, and often we 
are confused. The wisest amongst us are only as brick- 
layers, and the best can but lay two or three bricks in a 
lifetime. Our work is to do that if we can. We can guess 
very feebly at the whole design. Many mistakes must be 
made by us, as they have been made by those before us. 
And it may be the duty of a new generation to pull down 
the work that in sorrow we have toiled to build up. 



PART V 

SEXUAL EDUCATION 

Wendla. I have a sister who has been married for 
two and a half years, I myself have been made an aunt 
for the third time, and I haven't the least idea how it 
all comes about. Don't be cross, Mother dear, don't 
be cross! Whom in the w^orld should I ask but you! 
Please tell me, dear Mother. I am ashamed for my- 
self. Please, Mother, speak ! Don't scold me for ask- 
ing you about it. Give me an answer — How does it 
happen.'* How does it all come about .^ You cannot 
really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years 
old, still believe in the stork. 

Frau Bergmann. Good Lord, child, but you are pe- 
culiar ! What ideas you have ! I really can't do that ! 

Wendla. But why not. Mother? Why not? It 
can't be anything ugly if everybody is delighted over 
it! 

Fraw Bergmann. O — O God protect me! I de- 
serve Go get dressed, child, go get dressed. 

Wendla. I'll go. And suppose your child went out 
and asked the chimney sweep? 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XIV 

THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 

A tragedy of childhood — The Awakening of Spring, by Frank Wede- 
kind — How we have ignored the need of the young for sex,ual 
enlightenment — The old method of silence a fatal mistake — Our 
fear of sex — The question of the sexual education of the child — 
Conflicting opinion — The twin causes of our civilisation prudery 
and prurience — The manner in which parents shirk and evade 
the natural inquiries of their children about birth and the facts 
of sex — The inevitable harm of this action — The early activity 
of the child's intelligence — Foolish stories and lies — Stimulate 
instead of quiet curiosity — Sex knowledge gained from servants 
and vicious companions — This danger from servants greater in 
the case of boys — Many young boys seduced by women — The 
duty of the mother to instruct her children — The difficulties 
that hinder parents — The child and the sexual impulse — The 
teaching of Freud — The danger from mistakes in the early train- 
ing of the child — No age too young for education to begin — 
Mistakes that may be made — Our unconscious teaching stronger 
than anything we say — The mistake of set lessons — Sex not a 
subject to be taught like arithmetic — What is necessary is to 
tell the child the truth — Its questions must be answered as soon 
as they are put — The importance of not arousing curiosity — The 
child, not the mother, to be the guide — Cases in which we must 
be prepared to fail — The mother cannot always help her child — 
Recapitulation — The real difficulty in sexual education arises 
from our treatment of sex as something apart from the rest of 
life — "We are afraid — Nothing worth doing can be done until 
this is changed. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 

"The child at its mother's knee is not too young to hear from 
her lips the sacred facts concerning his own origin; in a few years, 
indeed, he will be too old, for he will have learnt those facts from 
a worse source, perhaps in the gutter; and instead of being beautiful 
to him, as they might and could be, they will be merely dirty." — 
Havelock Ellis. 

The quotation I have placed before these three chap- 
ters on Sexual Education, which form the fifth and final 
section of my book, is taken from the play. The Awaken- 
ing of Sprmg, by Frank Wedekind ; he calls it a tragedy 
of childhood, and dedicates the work to parents and to 
teachers. The play deals with a group of school children, 
just entering the age of puberty, and consists mainly of 
their conversations one with another. These imaginative 
young souls speculate about the mysteries of birth and sex 
in a manner that is typical of all children, not mentally 
inert. Herein rests the great value of the work : we come 
to realise the terrible darkness surrounding the sexual life 
of the great majority of boys and girls, with the resulting 
tragedies that may, and often do, destroy health and even 
life. Unable to explain the forces germinating in their 
nature, these children are hindered and crushed by the 
sham decencies and complacent morality that greet their 
blind gropings. Never was a more powerful indictment 
made against the sham of our educational system as a 
preparation for life. 

The manner in which, up to the present time, we have 

305 



306 MOTHERHOOD 

ignored the need of the young for enlightenment and 
guidance in questions of such elemental importance to 
health and well-being is at once remarkable and difficult 
to understand. Under the influence of the idea of the sin- 
fulness and radically evil nature of the sexual life, we have 
stood helpless, as if we were faced with a mysterious and 
malignant power; we have left the development even of 
our own children to the blind hazard of chance. Those 
among us who were wiser were not heeded. Celebrated 
pedagogues of a hundred years ago, such as Rousseau, 
Salzmann, Jean Paul and others, expressed themselves 
strongly in favour of the early sexual enlightenment of 
youth, and gave many valuable suggestions as to the 
methods of such teaching. Their wise recommendations 
remained for the most part without practical results. Only 
in recent years, in connection with the question of the pro- 
tection of motherhood and the campaign against prostitu- 
tion, has interest in the matter been reawakened. A height- 
ened sense of responsibility has been quickened amongst us. 
An increased knowledge, gained by the patient work of in- 
vestigation of the sexual impulse, is proving the immense 
importance of its right direction in the individual life. 
This would seem to be forcing us to act. 

To-day it is conceded, even by many who are conserva- 
tive in their attitude to sex, that the old plan of silence 
and leaving this matter to chance, has been a fatal mis- 
take : we are coming to understand that every child has a 
sacred claim to wise training in sex knowledge. 

There can be no doubt of our past guilt. The proof 
rests in unnumbered and needless disasters in the lives of 
almost all of us — sufferings unendurable and maiming; 
hurts to our deepest selves, that we have come to under- 



THE MOTHER AND THE CHH^D 307 

stand only when our thoughts have been hberated by 
knowledge. 

From our fear of sex, we have become the victims of sex. 

What can save us.^* It is women — the mothers who hold 
the future in their keeping. The answer rests with them. 
Liberation from the manifold problems of our disordered 
sexual life depends largely on a right transmission^ of 
knowledge to our children, so that they without harm may 
become wise. Such teaching must be given first by the 
mother. In this way only, through a trained and wiser 
motherhood, making possible the unhampered unfoldment 
of the children of the future, can humanity come into its 
heritage. 

This is my firm conviction, my profound belief. And 
for this reason, in my book on Motherhood, I have placed 
the question of sexual education last, because I hold it to 
be the most important of all — the foundation necessary 
before other changes or reforms can be of any avail. 

There is much that gives me hope. This question of 
the sexual education of her children has begun to stir in 
the conscious thought of countless mothers. The days of 
folded hands are happily over. Mothers of all classes de- 
sire knowledge for their children because they want to save 
them from suffering and from falling into the mistakes 
that they, through want of knowing, have themselves 
made.-"^ 

While, however, mothers, as well as the great mass of 
educationalists and reformers, recognise more and more 
the need for this knowledge for all children, they are yet 
uncertain as to how and when sex teaching should be 

1 In proof of this, see the letters from the Mothers of the Co- 
operative Guild quoted on pp. 40-44. 



308 MOTHERHOOD 

given. ^ There is too much hesitating so that often cow- 
ardice prevents any action being taken. And the ques- 
tion, "What shall we teach our children and at what age 
ought we first to speak?" is one to which few have as yet 
found a certain answer. 

The truth is, the vast majority of mothers and teachers 
are themselves amazingly and perilously ignorant on the 
whole subject of sex. The ban of silence has worked un- 
told evil in our thoughts, and what makes the difficulty even 
worse is that we are so very much afraid of sex it is im- 
possible for us to learn. Hence we go about seeking mys- 
teries and hunting lies, and completely lose sight of what 
should be as clear as daylight — the need of the little child. 

The twin curses of our civilisation that fetter the spirit, 
prudery and prurience, acting together, have drawn sex 
into the darkest, unwholesomest corners of our minds, so 
that few of us mention the subject even to our own chil- 
dren without a feeling of shame. So pitifully afraid are 
we of the facts of life that we invent fables and lie to them 
as to how they were born. 

Parents shirk and evade the natural inquiries of their 
children; very often no kind of answer is given to their 
young searchings for the truth. In other cases foolish fic- 
tions that outrage even a child's intelligence are repeated, 
and falsehood piled upon falsehood. For it is one condi- 
tion of a lie that it can never stand alone; and when a 
mother has lied to her child once, she is compelled to weave 
a network of falsehood to sustain her first false statement. 

1 The Education Committee of the London County Council, for 
instance, have just agreed that in spite of the Report on Venereal 
Diseases and with its recommendation to schools to give sexual 
instruction, they would in no case advise teachers to give class in- 
struction on such matters, but, at the same time, they advise teachers 
to give such instruction privately to "individual" pupils. 



THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 309 

She must go on from one foolish evasion to worse untruths 
to keep up appearances. Every story which, like that of 
the stork or the gooseberry bush, rests upon a lie, is an 
outrage to the child. And the mother's authority stands 
upon a veritable quicksand, for the day will come when the 
child will not believe her. A careless word may be spoken 
by a servant, a companion, or some other, and, if , the 
mother has not saved herself in time, she will be discovered 
by her child as a liar. The whole structure of her pre- 
tence and shameful evasions will totter and fall to ruin. 
And with it must go her power to influence her child. Bar- 
riers of doubts and silence are raised which, as time goes 
on, more and more will separate the child from the parent. 
And such barriers once set up can hardly ever be broken 
through. An embarrassing sense of shame, rising like a 
poisonous gas between mother and child, will work death 
to any confidence. How many mothers have been forced 
in bitterness to cry, "I lied to my child. I concealed the 
truth year after year. Now my child turns from me, and 
no longer has faith in me or in my words." 

And this failure of duty on the part of the mother 
works unknown harm to the child. That is the essential 
point. Do our children remain in ignorance of the facts 
of sex which we, in our fear, fail to teach them? No, they 
do not. Girls and boys in tens of thousands take the course 
of action threatened by the child Wendla — they go and 
learn from others what their mothers have refused to tell 
them. Few children fail to discover, either through their 
ow^n intelligence or by some information they gain at 
school or from servants, some kind of sexual information. 
Thus too often they glean their first knowledge of sex 
from the vulgar, ignorant lips of the prurient. 



310 MOTHERHOOD 

I marvel at the blindness of parents, who seem unable 
to approach this question with even common understand- 
ing. Nine children out of ten gain information upon the 
relations of the sexes in the worst possible way. Fortunate 
is the child who escapes the contamination of ignorant in- 
decency. 

It should be remembered that in children the activity of 
the intelligence begins to work at an early age. Curiosity 
is very prominent: all children want "to find out." And 
their activity will certainly tend to manifest itself in an 
inquisitive desire to know many elementary facts of life, 
which are dependent upon sex. The primary and most 
universal of these desires is the wish to know where babies 
come from. The degree of curiosity differs, of course, in 
different children; I do not think it is absent from any 
normal child. If they do not question their elders, they 
certainly will talk with one another. And the shy child, or 
the child who is kept from other companions, is not saved 
from these curiosities: I am inclined to think that the in- 
terest is strengthened and made more dangerous by re- 
pression. 

Many foolish stories are told by mothers, in their blind- 
ness and lack of faith, to put off the child's natural desire 
to learn its origin. There is a curious illusion that chil- 
dren accept these fables, and really believe that the baby 
is found in the garden under the gooseberry tree, or 
brought by the stork, or by the doctor in his bag. But 
the child's perception is more acute than is believed, and 
very rarely is any one deceived. And the mother forgets 
that by puzzling the child's mind with these foolish stories 
she defeats very surely the object for which they are in- 
vented. The greater the mystery about sex matters the 



THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 311 

more will childish curiosity be aroused. We cannot escape 
from this. The child thinks much less of what it knows and 
is sure of than of what it does not know, hut wants to find 
out. 

And the same objection, of stimulating instead of quiet- 
ing curiosity, applies to the plan adopted by many parents 
of telling the child when it asks these questions that it is 
too young to understand and must wait until it is older. 
This postponement is better than inventing foolish fables 
and telling lies, but I am sure it is unwise. The mother 
thinks the child is satisfied and forgets. Very rarely is 
this the case; the child puzzles alone, its curiosity only 
quickened by the hurt that has been given to its sensitive 
young intelligence. A wide experience has taught me 
that the only children who do not talk or think much about 
the origin of babies are the children who know how babies 
are born. 

The silly stories told by parents are supplemented by 
equally absurd and often seriously injurious conversations 
with other children. Many servants of both sexes are ad- 
dicted to idle and irreverent, even if not vicious, talk upon 
this subject, and by this means the views of many chil- 
dren, and even their whole future outlook, upon sex are 
distorted and besmirched. This is particularly the case 
with boys, where any intimacy with servants is much more 
dangerous than a similar intimacy in the case of girls. 

I must follow this question a little, though it leads me 
aside from the main subject of this chapter. Young boys 
at school and elsewhere are in constant danger. It is rarely 
that girls are placed in a position of intimacy with an 
adult male, except their father or their brothers. The 
very reverse is the case with boys: they are tended, and 



312 MOTHERHOOD 

when young are washed and bathed, by women servants, 
their clothes are looked after by women, in sickness they are 
nursed by women, and in innumerable cases they are 
brought into much more intimate relations with women 
than girls are ever brought into with men. 

I would like to say a great deal more about this danger. 
The part played by servants in the sexual initiation of 
boys carelessly left in their charge, and often when they 
are still children, is much larger than usually is credited. 
It is folly to close our eyes to the evils that may, and often 
do, arise. Perhaps in no other matter has the ignorance 
of mothers worked greater evils or been more culpable thau 
it has been here. Nor is it servants alone that have to be 
feared in this connection : many boys have been seduced by 
women, who would be least suspected of such an act. I 
could give cases from my own knowledge: men, at least, 
will know that I speak the truth. The facts are ugly, but 
they may not be overlooked. No mother should be ig- 
norant on these matters. For myself I would trust my 
little adopted son — he is twelve years old — ^with no ser- 
vant and with very few women. This may seem a hard say- 
ing, but it is based on a wide knowledge of what happens 
to many boys. We expose our children to manifold dan- 
gers which only now are we coming to understand. We 
have to accept these things unless we are ready to 
act. 

Even if no such great evil happens, much harm may be 
done by vulgar speech. Beautiful and sacred emotions, 
marvellous processes of nature, legitimate and essential 
longings, become associated in the tender expanding mind 
of the healthy boy with the unseemly, the shameful, and the 
unclean. Where the child should learn to wonder, he is 



THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 313 

taught to know shame and to deride. The results are ter- 
rible in many cases. 

It is the mother's duty and privilege unceasingly to 
watch her child, but this she can do only if she has knowl- 
edge and is wise. 

It must not be thought that I am unmindful of the 
many and great difficulties that hinder the actions of 
parents. Under our present conditions of almost universal 
concealments, the sexual education of our children is, 
indeed, so difficult a problem that I am conscious of all 
manner of obstacles as I attempt to suggest a solution. Of 
one thing only am I certain : we can no longer leave this 
matter safely to the hazard of chance. 

I know well that there are many parents who, fully 
recognising the importance of safeguarding their chil- 
dren, yet hold back in fear of what they think may be the 
danger of bringing the sex impulses too early into the 
child's focus of consciousness. It is also thought, though 
less often said, that in previous generations boys and girls 
got on very well without this fad of sex-instruction. But 
the question is whether they really did. The widespread 
prevalence of sexual troubles (which are only now begin- 
ning to be understood and to gain the attention that for 
so long they have claimed) is to a large extent the corol- 
lary of our hypocritical or cynical attitude as adults to the 
difficulties of youth. We ourselves have "muddled through," 
and we placate our consciences with the whisper, "What we 
have done, the youngsters can do also. Let them alone, 
it's a beastly awkward subject to tackle." 

It would be waste of time to answer such arguments. I 
would point out only one result of such criminal and cold- 
blooded indifference: it is generally the most promising 



314. MOTHERHOOD 

children who are destroyed through sex struggles. The 
coarser-fibred children may escape and come through 
without great hurt : it is the sensitive children — ^who fight 
and recoil and thus suffer — who are sacrificed by the total 
lack of appreciation on the part of their elders of their 
difficulties and blind gropings for light, sacrificed some- 
times to the slaying of the body and the soul. 

The first objection needs more careful consideration. 
Here, as I have pointed out already, the greatest differ- 
ence of opinion arises in connection with the questions as to 
when and how sexual instruction should be given to 
children. Some, like myself, plead for the enlightenment 
to be as early as possible, in the first years of the child's 
life, so that never may there be a conscious period in which 
the child does not know. There are, however, many who 
disagree and hold it better, for the reasons I have shown, 
to defer sexual instruction till the child is older, to the 
onset of puberty, or even later. Perhaps the attitude com- 
mon to most parents is one of hesitation, that may be ex- 
pressed in the question : For how long can we safely leave 
this matter alone? 

No one will wisely give a dogmatic answer to this ques- 
tion. Yet I think we can come to a better understanding if 
we at once put out of our minds any idea of formal instruc- 
tion. Sex is not something outside of life — a subject that 
we can teach or not teach to our child, like arithmetic, for 
instance. This has been our great mistake. And we shall 
see our folly more clearly, if for a little time we focus our 
attention on the child, and stop our rather useless dis- 
cussions. 

Now it is part of the popular belief about the sexual im- 
pulse that it is absent in childhood, and first appears in the 



THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 315 

period of life known as puberty. This is a serious error 
and one that has brought many evil consequences, not the 
least of which has been our failure to understand the 
nature of the child. We are now reaping our mistakes and 
finding out that the exact opposite of this is the truth. 
The remarkable work of Freud, that has opened up a whole 
new field of inquiry, has shown us that the sexual instinct 
is never absent in the normal child. "In reality," he states, 
''the new-born infant brings sexuality with it into the 
world, sexual sensations accompany it through the days 
of lactation and childhood, and very few children can fail 
to experience sexual activities and feelings before the 
period of puberty." ^ 

Possibly there is some little exaggeration in this view, 
for the basis of our knowledge is still very narrow; but 
it seems certain we must accept Freud's view as in the 
main right, as, indeed, any one of us who has had any ex- 
perience of children may prove for ourselves by our own 
observation. Have you ever considered the games of your 
young children — the way in which they imitate father and 
mother, play the game of the family, and delight in being 
the parents of their dolls? Your child is being taught by 
Nature, and the first appearance of sex in its heart occurs 
as simply as the fall of the dew upon the flowers. It is we, 
their elders, who in our blundering too often break in and 
sully this beautiful unfolding. Sex is not something to be 
escaped from. This never can be done. We have, even 
if against our will, to accept its presence. 

Freud — and his opinion may not be put aside — ^holds 
that in all young children there is present a sexual life more 

1 "Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory," The Infantile Sexu- 
ality, p. 38. Eng. trans.. New York, 1910. 



316 MOTHERHOOD 

or less subconscious, which may be exaggerated and even 
perverted by any carelessness, neglect, or repression. It is 
believed that certain manifestations of infantile activity, 
notably the excretory functions and feeding, as also the 
common habit of thumb-sucking and biting of the nails, 
are closely connected with the sexual impulse. 

In normal children the sexuality of this infantile 
period, which lasts until the third or fourth year, then 
passes into more or less complete oblivion. There follows 
a happy play period during which sex is latent, and this 
lasts until puberty approaches. It is during this period of 
sexual latency that the psychic forces of the child develop 
— forces which, in later years, act as inhibitions on the 
sexual life and narrow and direct its expression like dams. 
But in nervous children, where frequently there is sexual 
precocity, this order is very likely to be disturbed. And 
the danger may be increased by the over-fondling of an 
unwise and voluptuous mother, by an ignorant nurse, or the 
suggestion of an older and vicious child, with very detri- 
mental results. A wrong direction may most easily be given 
to the child's sexual development in its earliest years. Neu- 
rotic manifestations such as hysteria, obsessions, and many 
sexual perversions, are traced back by Freud to the influ- 
ence of the wrongly directed or repressed erotic experiences 
of childhood. It seems to be quite clear that any repres- 
sion of the instinctive and sub-conscious infantile sexuality 
makes for evil; that the only safe course to follow is the 
culture of a healthy and right expression. J'reud goes the 
length of saying that obsessions are in every case trans- 
formed reproaches which have escaped from the attempted 
repression and are always connected with some pleasurable 
sexual feeling aroused in childhood. 



THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 317 

Now, before I go on further to point out the hne of 
action, and the change in our attitude to this question, 
that must follow inevitably from our knowledge of the 
early existence in the child of the sexual impulse, I would 
wish to underline as strongly as I am able the facts that 
we have learnt: (1) Every child is bom with a sexual 
nature; (2) this infantile sexuality furnishes the ground- 
work of the later sexual life; (3) and the individual's sex- 
ual conduct and health will depend, in part at least, on the 
peculiarities of this early period of infancy and childhood; 
(4) therefore, the sexual desires and instincts with which 
the child is born cannot safely be left alone; they must be 
dealt with in some way; (5) for a wrong direction to these 
instincts may most easily be given by any mistake or neg- 
lect on the part of the mother or those connected with the 
child; (6) lastly, and most important of all, repression of 
sex is always dangerous; any efforts made in this direction 
are very likely to lead to evil in the later life of the child. 

We have found now the answer to the question we were 
seeking: the sexual education of the child should begi/n in 
its earliest years, since there is no age too young for harm 
to be done by our neglect or mistakes. 

The first teacher must, therefore, be the mother, who is 
with the child and should watch over and direct its unfold- 
ing nature, by unceasing and selfless care, in these early 
years when care counts for most. And I would state in 
passing, that here is another reason — and I hold it the 
strongest reason of all — why no mother, who is not forced 
to do so, should leave her home to work and have thus to 
delegate her sacred duty of caring for her child to another. 

But again we are faced with difficulties many and various 
that will have to be overcome. For while every one must 



318 MOTHERHOOD 

agree that a wise mother is incomparably the child's best 
teacher, it is equally true that the unwise mother may do 
incalculable harm. And when we face, as I am attempting 
to do, the conditions of the ordinary home, as we all know 
it to be under the present guidance of ignorance and prej- 
udice in these questions, it seems certain that few mothers 
can wisely carry out this teaching. Not much hope for the 
child until this is changed. Thus, it is clear that the sexual 
education of the child will have to begin with changed con- 
ditions in the home and sexual education of the mother. 

This is going to be a very difficult task, and I speak here 
of good mothers, not of bad ones. It is a painful fact that 
many mothers, who are keenly conscious of their respon- 
sibility and most anxious to train their children aright, are 
too shy to be of much direct use to them in their sexual 
education. They cannot free themselves, even when they 
wish to do this, from the vulgarisation of the idea of sex 
that has resulted from their own training. 

There can be nothing gained by pretending that this 
question of sexual education is going to be an easy matter. 
It may be so in theory, it will not be easy in practice. Some- 
times, indeed, I am so filled with doubts and sadness, that, 
if doing and saying nothing were working w^ell, I might 
be tempted to think that to establish sexual training under 
present conditions was even a worse course than to go on 
leaving the matter alone. But I know that all is not well. 
By continuing our policy of negligence and cowardice we 
are holding open the way to disasters in the future, the 
far-reaching evils of which we are only now beginning 
to understand. 

It is obvious that sex instruction may be given blunder- 
ingly even with the greatest good-will; I am, indeed, ex- 



THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 319 

ceedingly doubtful of the efficacy of any kind of formal 
teaching. Certainly set lessons, or even "arranged talks," 
should not be given to young children. All children har- 
bour curiosities regarding their bodily structure and the 
basis of life. In an atmosphere of trust, sooner or later 
they will express these natural curiosities in a tentative, 
haphazard way. This is the psychological moment for the 
mother's teaching. The question asked must be answered 
truthfully and in terms simplified to the comprehension of 
the child. The reply must have the air of being both 
candid and confidential: that is to say, it must satisfy 
curiosity and at the same time leave the impression that 
such subjects are to be avoided in general conversation, not 
because they are "nasty," but because they are so sacred 
and intimate that they should be mentioned only to those 
the child loves and respects. The ideal must ever be to 
educate through love, to avoid always repressive measures, 
and to aid the expression of the normal sex instincts: let 
the child establish its own psychic individuality. 

Our unconscious example must always be far stronger in 
its result on the child's mind than anything we can say. 
Of what use can our teaching be, if, through our own want 
of purity, the concealments that breed curiosity and shame, 
are evident in all our attitude to our bodies and to the 
physical facts of our being.? The child is not shown the 
duty of reverence for himself ; he is not taught the beauty 
of all the processes of his young life; the sex organs are 
left without proper names, and the child is told that it 
must not speak of these parts. We are continuously care- 
less in our conversations and in our acts before our chil- 
dren. We take them to see picture plays and allow them 
to read books and tell them stories in which love is vul- 



320 MOTHERHOOD 

garised, and all kinds of false statements are allowed. In 
these and in numerous other ways, weeds are caused by our 
folly to spring up in the child's mind. We can never undo 
by any teaching a sense of shame in sex and love that our 
actions and thoughtless words have revealed to the quick 
intelligence of the child. 

It is entirely false to think that the facts of sex plainly 
and simply told will shock and seem strange to the young 
child. It is to the prurient only that there is anything ugly 
or disillusioning in birth and love. The child will receive 
your information with wonder and guileless delicacy. The 
mother need have no fear of her child, only of herself. 
The error in all these cases is the error of our own im- 
purity of thought ; the hateful idea that the facts of sex 
are ugly and disillusioning. Here we have the key to the 
whole problem : it explains the utter helplessness and weak- 
ness of our attitude. It will be very long before this can 
be changed ; the evil is rooted so deeply in almost all of us. 

A child of four and even younger will begin to ask ques- 
tions of its mother. As soon as the questions are put they 
should be answered in such a manner that the child's curi- 
osity is satisfied. And this brings me to what I hold to be 
more important than all else. In this difficult question of 
sexual enlightenment, it is the child who must he the guide 
of the parent. I regard this as the most urgent rule for 
every mother. Never arouse sexual curiosity in the child, 
either directly hy offering instruction on the subject or 
indirectly hy careless speech or action, hut always he ready 
to satisfy such curiosity at once when it is present in the 
child's consciousness. 

This is, of course, to say that every question of the child 
must be answered by the truth. It goes without saying, 



THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 321 

that the mother must give her answer just as if she were 
talking on any other subject, or explaining the function of 
any other organ of the body. This course can be adopted 
only where adults are able to talk of these subjects without 
shame. There must be no hushed voices, no special man- 
ner in speaking. Any hint of such feeling or hesitancy on 
the part of the mother will communicate itself at once to 
the quick consciousness of the child. Here again I ^am 
driven back to the difficulty of our own fear of sex : this is 
the stumbling-block that hinders the right teaching of our 
children. 

I know there are many parents who will fear this open- 
ness of speech and action, holding that it is dangerous to 
break through the mystery and reserve with which we have 
surrounded the physical facts of love. This danger is felt 
to be specially great in the case of girls. I am certain 
this is a very deep mistake. Show the child that the mys- 
tery of sex rests in its sacredness: teach it that, for this 
reason, we do not speak of the subject lightly, holding it 
in too great reverence for common speech ; but never let 
it be thought of as a subject tabooed, one on which open- 
ness of thought is not nice, for thus it will become shame- 
ful, and uncleanness and not mystery will keep it in the 
dark places of the child's consciousness. 

But here I would give a further word of warning to the 
mother. She must not expect or desire from her child a 
continued attention to her teaching, nor must she force 
by over-emphasis or any kind of moral warnings a false 
sentiment in her teachiijg. I believe this to be very impor- 
tant. The child, at the age when such questions first will be 
asked and should be answered, will tire very quickly of any 
information that the mother gives. It will break off to run 



S22 MOTHERHOOD 

away and play, or will interrupt the most beautiful and 
carefully prepared lesson. But if the mother is wise, she 
will never go beyond the interest of the child. 

Facts communicated in this way and at such natural 
opportunities are subconsciously noted and swiftly dis- 
missed from the consciousness of the child, who soon be- 
comes interested in something else after the disconnected 
discursive fashion of childish thinking. And, when so 
treated, it will be found that children are not inordinately 
interested in these questions ; they will break off from what 
they are asking you about birth or the procedure of the 
sexual act to talk about toy soldiers or dolls. This very 
carelessness in attention is, indeed, the immense value of 
this form of teaching: the child has the information and 
yet does not trouble about it, and ignores it when it is not 
to the point. Such can never be the case when the infor- 
mation is given in the form of a set lesson and intercon- 
nected with moral teaching. So important is this that I 
think it better and safer for the mother to err on the side 
of saying too little than saying too much. All that is 
essential is that the truth should be told. 

Now this is not going to be easy. Above all else, it is 
necessary to establish, as far as is possible, feelings of 
openness and sympathy between the mother and her child. 
And for this it is essential that the mother must herself 
have the most absolute faith in the purity of sex, and in 
her own physical relationship to her child and to its 
father. Without this nothing that is worth gaining can 
be gained from any form of teaching. The slightest 
doubt or uncertainty on the mother's part is fatal; then, 
at once, shame will begin to creep in to hurt the young and 
sensitive life. 



THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 323 

There is another matter that must be considered. It is 
often stated, by the most careful parents as well as by 
those who arc careless, that complete and perfect sympathy 
exists between them and their children. "My child tells 
me everything" has been the thought to bring comfort to 
many mothers. But is this true? For myself I have won- 
dered if such an ideal can ever be attained fully. Nor am 
I certain, if we think of the child only, whether it is an 
ideal really to be desired. We have to remember that we 
— the parents — belong to one generation and the child to 
another. And this barrier of age is felt in nothing more 
strongly than it is in sex. The intense and complicated 
forces that have moulded us are but awakening in the 
young life. We can, at best, hope only to guide our chil- 
dren ; we can give to them some little knowledge gained by 
the experience of our mistakes, but we cannot give them the 
knowledge they can gain only from life, nor can we save 
them from making their own mistakes. 

Idle curiosity is banished by simple honest teaching, and 
much evil is thereby prevented. But the boundless curi- 
osity of the child is not and, indeed, should not be satisfied. 
The boy or the girl, as he or she grows older, will have to 
experiment, to find out for himself or herself. To ignore 
this need is, I am certain, to blind ourselves to the facts of 
life. We must be prepared that, with all our care, our 
most loving efforts to gain the confidence of our children 
will be met by refusals. 

And although this failure may, and, indeed, must sadden 
us as we watch the child of our love passing out of the pro- 
tective circle of our power to help, we need to know that 
this is a natural process — a step forward that should be 
taken by the boy or girl ; we even fail in our duty do we try 



324 MOTHERHOOD 

to hold them back and refuse to loosen the cords of 
guidance. The child is fulfilling his or her own needs in 
turning from us. Age cannot always help youth. In the 
early years the child desires and should have the very indi- 
vidualised and binding relation with its parents, but when 
he is older he ought to free himself from the old bindings 
— from the covering protection of the mother and father — 
if he is to establish his own character and suitably adapt 
himself to the world outside the home. 

Our children will turn away from us in their search for 
knowledge and experience. All that any mother can do 
is to establish a relationship of openness and confidence 
in her child's early years, for if it is not done then hardly 
ever can it be done later. But even when this has been 
done, there will still be needed the utmost care that what 
has been gained may not be used for the mother's own 
satisfaction and against the good of the boy or the girl. 

All the wisdom and patience and tenderness and sacrifice 
of the parents will be needed after the epoch of puberty 
and in the difficult years of adolescence, to know when it is 
wise to give advice and claim confidence, or when the 
harder duty must be done of pushing the boy or the girl 
away to experiment and live upon their own responsi- 
bility. 

Here, again, I would give warning : in these later adoles- 
cent years it is always the child — ^boy or girl — and not the 
parents who must be the guide. The mother and the father 
must be ready at all times, but their task is, I think, one of 
very patient and loving waiting: it is the child who must 
desire to give the confidence. It is true that the wise parent 
may create opportunities of confidence ; to these the boy or 
the girl will respond readily ; at least this will be so when 



THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD 325 

the early training of the child has been without any hate- 
ful sense of shame. 

Such are the facts as they present themselves to me. 

The real failure in sexual education arises from our 
treatment of sex as something apart from the rest of life. 
We have got to change this, if we are to help our children. 
Sex must cease to be a forbidden subject. Label 'any 
natural function as improper, not to be spoken about and 
repellent, and at once you set up an abnormal curiosity, 
and open a way for almost every evil. We must cease to 
be afraid. 

There is, of course, a very deep reason for this fear of 
sex. The sex impulses are not often realised and under- 
stood in the conscious life of men and women, and although 
they can be caught up and fused into all that is best in 
the individual character, they remain in most of us unrec- 
ognised and untamed. You will see what I mean. The 
sex instinct has retained its wildness, and we must, I think, 
face the fact that there is in all of us a volcanic element 
in sex, underlying and influencing all the rest of our 
nature, and, for that very reason, shaking the individual 
character from its foundations with tremor, if not with 
catastrophe. This distrust of the dynamic force, which so 
often we have found difficult to control in ourselves, causes 
us to fear for our children. We are afraid that many 
growths we do not like may spring up in them. And the 
immediate result in us is an inhibitory awkwardness — 
largely an effort of hiding — in the face of everything that 
comes within hailing distance of the sex passion. 

Until we have cleared our thoughts from this confusion 
of fear, very little good can be done. Let us purify our- 
selves and re-establish our own faith. When once we come 



326 MOTHERHOOD 

to understand, we cannot go on leaving our children to be 
sullied, and in some cases — and those not a few — even 
crushed and destroj^ed by our mock modesty, sham de- 
cencies and complacent blindness. 

It is my firm conviction that most of the perversions of 
sex, a whole list of diseases, the almost countless number 
of unhappy marriages, many of the existing social evils — 
may be traced back to this cause. It is unsafe to prophesy, 
yet I think much of the misery would be remedied, if once 
we could dispel the unwholesome mystery with which we, 
in our timidity and uncleanness of mind, have enveloped 
the facts of birth and the relations between the sexes. Such 
mystery is really nothing but shame; much of it may be 
dispelled by the wholesome light of simple and wise teach- 
ing. So only can we hope to guide our children's natural 
and beautiful unfolding. We must inculcate in them from 
their earliest years respect for their own bodies and for the 
reproductive act. 

Reverence for sex as something holy should be part of 
every child's education. The eternal hymn of Love is the 
noblest strain in the universe, and the young should be 
taught to heed it reverently. There must be no false valu- 
ation of the impulse which unites men and women, if we 
wish our daughters and our sons to fulfil worthily the high 
duties of parenthood. We cannot teach unless our faith is 
great and we also practise. We must plant deep in our 
children's fresh natures a desire for beauty, not alone in 
outside things, but in all thought and in every deed relat- 
ing to the Life force, which is Love. 

You will see now the scope of the claim I am making for 
sexual education: it is to be the means whereby conceal- 
ments are to be broken through and shame in sex is to be 
destroyed. 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XV 

SEXUAL EDUCATION WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO 
THE ADOLESCENT GIRL 

Our very limited powers — Our children have to experiment and to 
learn life for themselves — The theoretical teacher who reforms 
the world on paper — The hindrances placed in the way of the 
sex emotions — We educate girls and boys as if they were sexless 
neuters — The folly of this denial of sex — The origin of our fear 
— An attempt to express the psychological meaning of the com- 
bination of the man and the woman — The differences between 
the boy and the girl — An attempt to follow this dissimilarity — 
The evils arising from the modern tendency to ignore sex differ- 
ences — This the real weakness in the position of the modern girl 
— She has a profound distrust of herself as a woman — Our schools 
and educational system founded on the needs of boys — This a 
great evil — The development of the girl at puberty more difl&cult 
than the development of the boy — Every girl lives a hidden life 
of her own — The conflict in the sensitive soul of the adolescent — 
This the age of romance and idealism — The danger of sudden 
and wrong knowledge of the physical facts of sex — Full instruc- 
tion of girls more necessary even than the instruction of boys — 
The immense danger of repression — The transformation of pu- 
berty — Painful experiences of youth act harmfully in the later 
years — Our deadly silences and sham presentation of life — The 
injury we do to the girl by ignoring her sexual life — Induces sex- 
ual coldness — This the great cause of unhappiness in marriage — 
Our fear and denial of love — This what is wrong with life. 



CHAPTER XV 

SEXUAL EDUCATION WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO 
THE ADOLESCENT GIRL 

"But, alas! a hindrance ever lurketh in our way; it is the leaven 
in the dough, the deadly flies that invert the sweetness of the fragrant 
wine; . . . Thus . . . the wrongful thoughts ferment. Evil 
plougheth in and urgeth as a task-master. He wasteth and destroy- 
eth, and, lo ! we are taken captive in this thraldom ; he giveth over the 
innocent and pure to death; defilement spreadeth, and of joy there 
is naught left." — (Eng. trans., Jewish Prayer for the Day of Atone- 
ment.) 

Now, because I desire sexual enlightenment for all chil- 
dren, and, in particular, for all girls, and seek as a re- 
former the re-shaping of education in the home and in the 
school, it does not follow that I am so over-presumptuous 
as to believe it possible in this way quickly to remedy all 
sexual mistakes, or that I do not realise how our policy of 
muddle and leaving these matters alone has not always been 
as disastrous as, indeed, we might expect. I know that in 
many cases and among numerous young people the sexual 
life follows a healthy and beautiful unfolding, in spite of 
anything we may do or may leave undone. And it needs 
but a cursory view to see that all is not confused and an 
aimless conflict of waste, but that the wonderful beauty 
of youth often will triumph over the meanness of our fears, 
our subterfuges and blind blunderings. One perceives 
something that goes on, something that is continually 
working in the child to make order out of our muddle, 

329 



330 MOTHERHOOD 

beauty out of our defacements: to force light, frankness 
and purity in place of our shams and our lies. 

Doubtless to the theoretical teacher eager to reform the 
world on paper, it seems a very easy matter to lay down 
rules for mothers and teachers regarding sexual instruc- 
tion — new finger-posts to conduct, whereby the young gen- 
eration may be guarded from making the mistakes that we 
ourselves have made. But can we do this.? For in sex we 
have as yet learnt very little, and I doubt sometimes if we 
can ever learn very much, except each one of us for our- 
selves out of our own experience. We of an older genera- 
tion cannot save our children very far, or hold them back 
from life. And it may be well that at once we realise and 
acknowledge the very narrow limits of our power. 

But this is not to say that we are to shirk and continue 
to act as if all were well when we know that it is not so. 
The manner in which, up to the present day, we have com- 
pletely ignored the very fact of sex in our educational 
system is almost incredible. There has been in many direc- 
tions a vast range of betrayal and baseness in our treat- 
ment of youth. 

No other emotion is so hindered, opposed, and loaded 
with material and moral fetters. We know how education 
makes a beginning in this way, and how life continues the 
process. Perhaps some of these hindrances are inevitable ; 
but many are the direct result of our adult stupidity, and 
the way we have failed in training the young. How can 
you expect the primitive powerful sex impulse not to suf- 
fer.? The sex emotions are among the deepest, if not the 
deepest, of our nature ; they exercise an influence on every 
phase of development, and, in one form or another^ direct 
the entire being of the individual. We know this. And all 



*! 



SEXUAL EDUCATION 331 

the time we continue to educate girls and boys ^ts if they 
were sexless neuters. Could folly be greater? 

By our teaching and our example we are destroying for 
the young the harmony of Nature. We ourselves are shame- 
faced because we are still savages in sex. If not, why this 
awe and funk, these taboos and mysteries, all the secretive 
cunning with which we hide from the young facts th0,t we 
all know, but pretend that we don't know.-^ 

And it cannot be overlooked that this fear of sex is 
of very ancient origin, which makes it the more difficult 
to eradicate. We have, I believe, to allow for an ages-old, 
and therefore strongly rooted, sense of separation, causing 
an often unconscious antagonism between the two sexes. 
We see its unchecked action in many examples in the animal 
kingdom, though not in all — it is quite absent, for instance, 
in the family life of certain insects and in the perfect loves 
of many birds, whose life-histories we examined in the first 
section of this book. We see the same antagonism acting 
continually among primitive peoples in the elaborate and 
sacred system of taboos which separate the two sexes. 
Indeed, the beginnings of the marriage system can be 
traced back to a primitive conception of danger attaching 
to the sexual act. I am not very hopeful that this sex 
separation that is a kind of antagonism can ever be wholly 
eliminated ; I am not even sure that it is well that it should be 
eliminated. May it not be that love itself would be withered 
did we take it away ? I am not certain at all ; I know, how- 
ever, that this fear of sex has led us into great folly. 

What is the psychological meaning of the combination 
of man and woman? It is the union between opposites, 
which, perhaps, I may try to explain further as the union 
between consciousness and unconsciousness. The man is 



332 MOTHERHOOD 

essentially conscious, the woman essentially unconscious; 
the man is concentrated in his intellect, the woman is con- 
centrated in her senses. These, at least, are the nearest 
words in which I am able to express it. And of one thing 
I am certain: the modern way of mixing the qualities of 
the two sexes acts directly for unhappiness and in harm 
to the race. I did not always think this : I did not want to 
think it. I have come slowly to be convinced and against 
my own will. And I am glad to take the opportunity now, 
as I near the end of my book on Motherhood — the subject 
which ever has been deepest in my heart — to state this as 
my later opinion, which has been made clear to me by the 
experiences of my life. 

There is no use in saying there is no difference between 
the girl and the boy when human nature keeps asserting 
that there is. There is even, as I have been forced into 
accepting, a natural tendency between boys and girls to 
draw away from each other. You may see this separation 
in every co-education school where the children, led by 
deeper instincts than we have understood, bring our wisdom 
to foolishness. They unconsciously feel that separation 
which we have been trying to pretend does not exist. Each 
sex, at the very dawn of the teens and before, is unfolding 
interests, tastes, plays and ambitions of its own. 

It would be interesting to follow this dissimilarity as far 
as it could lead us. Sometimes it would seem that we had 
got to the bottom — to what is common to the girl as to 
the boy ; the qualities that both sexes share as human beings, 
where the ties of similarity seem to link their characters. 
But wait! deeper than this we must seek for the truth. 
Even in this likeness there is an all-pervading unlikeness. 
And it is just this: the differences, which cannot, I think, 



SEXUAL EDUCATION 333 

be expressed, but which do exist — differences in souls, in 
minds and in bodies — as well as a separation in the habits, 
the desires, and attitude to life, that makes for such har- 
mony in the elemental depths. 

The influence of sex extends in mysterious ways that as 
yet we do not understand. And the variation between the 
girl and the boy is far greater, I believe, than has ever in 
modern times been recognised. The longer I live, and the 
more life teaches me, the more strongly I am convinced of 
this fact : you do not make the girl into the boy by ignor- 
ing her special functions ; you do not lessen sexuality by 
pretending it is not there. 

From the start of puberty this difference between the 
girl and the boy should be faced; great is the harm that 
follows from our pretending it is not there. And the hurt 
suffered in my opinion, is almost always more serious to 
the girl than to the boy. 

Many women are blindly prejudiced on this question as, 
indeed, I myself once was. The reason of such mistake is 
plain. This breaking down or lessening of the differences 
between the two sexes may be, and is, possible. By means 
of education and the action of habit a child may be im- 
pressed with characteristics normally foreign to its sex, 
qualities and tendencies are thus developed which ordinarily 
appear only in a child of the opposite sex. I would refer 
the reader back to the early section of this book for exam- 
ples, most curious and suggestive, of such complete trans- 
position of the female and male characters.^ Things are 
not quite so obviously plain in the human world, but they 
are not less fateful, less significant. 

1 See p. 100, Also p. 222. For further information on this sub- 
ject, the reader is referred to the works of Mr. Walter Heape, 
especially Sex Antagonism and Preparation for Marriage. 



SS4i MOTHERHOOD 

We touch here the real weakness in the position of the 
modern girl : the profound distrust that she has of herself. 
I do not mean, of course, intellectually or as a worker, but 
a distrust of herself as Woman. I believe it results 
directly from educational influences. All our effort is 
directed to repress from the consciousness of the girl the 
realities of her own sexual nature; and what we do is to 
hinder her deepest instincts so that often they fail in find- 
ing a healthy expression. 

In our schools the educational system is founded on the 
needs of boys and not on the needs of girls. I regard this 
as a great crime. For one thing, the development of the 
girl is more obscure and difficult tl:ian the development of 
the boy ; in her sex-life there are finer balances, which opens 
up the way to greater evils. There is every possibility of 
morbid disturbance from any mistakes in the training. The 
girl has more that she needs to learn to establish her health 
and sexual happiness than has the boy; the pubescent 
period lasts longer with her and is more unsettling; while 
the greatest difficulty of all, perhaps, arises from the fact 
that her conduct is more ruled by deep unconscious in- 
stincts. Every girl lives a hidden life of her own, and it is 
within this shrine of her individuality that the primitive 
and fierce instincts of her sex struggle to find expression ; 
and though always unacknowledged and often, indeed, un- 
recognised, alike by the girl herself as well as by her elders, 
it is these instincts that direct her growth and are the 
determining influence of her life, far more important than 
the actions directed by her conscious self, which is occupied 
in learning lessons, in play, and all the outward interests 
of the daily life. 

And it is this deeper ego that suffers from our educa- 



SEXUAL EDUCATION 335 

tional system and the elaborate ingenuity with which the 
facts of Hfe are hidden and glossed over. Girls in our 
schools, and also in our homes, are trained to become secre- 
tive about themselves, treating their special sexual func- 
tions as a mystery and a shame. Truth-telling is incul- 
cated in all matters except sex, and here there is an unceas- 
ing evasion, which prepares disharmonies at the very dawn 
of sexual consciousness. 

Let us understand what harm we are doing. Do we 
know? Do we care? We have, I suppose, a certain vague 
ideal as to what Woman should be, but as far as I can see 
we give no kind of training to help a girl in any way to 
live healthily and fully her life as a woman. As it is, one is 
tempted to say that it is rather in spite of than by means 
of her education that any modern girl arrives at any con- 
ception of her womanly nature and her tasks. We really 
seem to be proclaiming a sense of injury because there is 
such a fact in the girl's nature as sex. 

Again I assert that our crime is manifest. We have set 
up an educational system that is blind to the needs of girls 
and the facts of their sexual life. How many among us 
women of this generation have suffered hurt — thousands 
of women defrauded of happiness and of health, bearing 
with them year after year the mark of lost instincts, stifled 
desires, and natures in part murdered. Do I write 
strongly? Yes, I do ; but I write of what I know to be true. 

Mothers, wrapped in the long trance of complacent liv- 
ing, remain indifferent, or are themselves too ignorant and 
dead to life to give help. As their daughters come to con- 
sciousness, as they begin to suffer their own fulfilment, they 
can do nothing and they cast them off. Hard shut down and 
silent in themselves, how many girls suffer the anguish of 



336 MOTHERHOOD 

youth reaching out for the unknown ideal that they can't 
grasp, can't even distinguish or conceive. What we call 
education helps them not at all, for how can any educa- 
tional system succeed when it runs contrary to nature? All 
the larger intimate problems that encompass life are neg- 
lected, while the intellect is crammed with a store of quite 
useless facts. Real education would lead to emancipation, 
but instead we prepare girls for examinations. 

And what we have to fear is a deadening of physical 
and spiritual response that must tend to follow from this 
suppression. For what is a girl's life? She works and 
rests from work, eats, and sleeps, and plays, and all the 
while she remains wrapped in the closest egoism, her 
strongest instincts smouldering beneath the dull weight of 
an education that is not an education, but an unstimulating 
and conforming pretence, and not fitted to the needs of 
living. Even when she is free and is turned out at last, 
apathetic and obliterated, she carries with her vague dreads 
of positive acts and new ideas. How seldom does she suc- 
ceed in urging out of herself the inmost vital part she has 
stifled. She is compacted of numbed faculties and inhibited 
desires. 

The inmost Self yearns to get out and away, to spend 
itself, to find its due share in the ever-creating life. But 
the confidence and possession of the Self has been 
destroyed; the ego is left alone with its dread, with the 
distrust of desires not understood and instincts thrust back 
within. 

And do you not see the result of this conflict to the sensi- 
tive soul of the adolescent ? The terrible evil of disharmonies 
first started during these pregnant and inceptive years that 
should be the infancy of the higher powers of womanhood? 



SEXUAL EDUCATION 337 

Robbed of a just confidence and pride in her sex, her own 
stifled instincts become to a girl hateful and as something 
of which she should be ashamed; she begins to chafe 
against her womanhood and spurn it, bemoaning the limi- 
tations of her sex. She lapses into boy's ways, methods 
of work and ideals ; she comes to live gaily enough and to 
laugh carelessly, not knowing what she has lost ; to care 
nothing to be herself — content to choke the vision in her 
own life. 

So it has been with you, with me, with all of us. Are we 
content that this blighting shall be suffered by our 
daughters ? 

The evil is happening for want of a generous guidance 
from us who have gone before. I write of what I know. 
Great and unending is the misery that we make possible by 
our folly, sickness of body and soul, so that the repressed 
nature rots away and doubt eats into natural faith. Nature 
is violated at every step, and after we have educated her, 
in nine cases out of ten, the girl emerges a mere residuum 
of decent minor dispositions. There is need to change. 

Much that is said or done, both consciously and uncon- 
sciously, by the adult will torture the adolescent's sensi- 
tiveness much more than is conceivable to any one who has 
no insight to the curious psychology of girls in these diffi- 
cult years. There is as a rule at this period of life a pain- 
ful dualisation of the soul; thus, while seeking to know 
about sex, many girls will turn violently from the truth, so 
that any guidance we may give now will be very likely to 
arouse anger and disgust. And I know of no safeguard 
except a full knowledge of the physical facts of sex — of 
begetting and of birth, that has been gained earlier in the 
play period of childhood, in years when such knowledge can 



338 MOTHERHOOD 

be assimilated unconsciously and its deep significance 
causes no response of personal disturbance. 

We have to remember that these are the years of ro- 
mance and idealism, when the always strong tendency 
among girls to sublimate and spiritualise love is at its 
highest. Sex knowledge could not possibly be given at a 
worse time than now, when the young soul is passing 
through its difficult birth and the conscious self seethes 
and teems with emotional ferment. If at this period the 
physical side of love is brought for the first time into 
notice there will be a withdrawal of the girl's ever-sensitive 
confidence, and worse, an ebb of the nerves, caused by dis- 
trust liberating the demon of fear ; an almost certain reac- 
tion of incredulity and disillusionment will follow, with 
after results that may prove to be deep and far-reaching 
in their danger to healthy life. 

We find then, contrary to the usual opinion, that an 
early and full instruction in the physical facts of sex 
is more necessary for girls even than it is for boys. The 
dangers of ignorance, or of sudden and too late knowledge, 
are greater. For any primary reaction of aversion, which 
is rarely absent, will in many cases strengthen into disgust 
and a curious horror that is partly fear and partly 
strengthened desire. For at the same tim.e there will very 
likely be a strong attractive element in the form of 
intensely excited curiosity, which may be active and exper- 
imenting, but more often and with even greater danger is 
kept hidden, but yet spies and clutches for new evidence. 
Such unhealthy curiosity, remaining for long unsatisfied 
or insufficiently satisfied, almost necessarily sets up morbid 
reactions, causing many sexual evils. 

You may say, of course, that I am mistaken ; that these 



SEXUAL EDUCATION 

things do not happen — at least, not in the case of your 
daughter or of any nice girls. I can answer only, that it 
is you — the mother or the teacher — who, I fear, are wrong, 
living in the paradise of the fool. I am not exaggerating 
at all. I have tried to show how serious is the shock and 
how severe the disillusionment that may follow to the ado- 
lescent on a too sudden meeting with the physical faqts of 
sex. It is time for us to cease pretending. We must 
realise that the mutilating or slaying of sex is followed 
always by disaster. 

Instincts which have been prevented from their natural 
expression must tend to escape and find expression in ab- 
normal forms that may, and often do, give rise to greater 
devastation. We have to face these things : there is no use 
in turning from them because they are horrid and in fear 
of giving offence. 

Let me take but one fact. Masturbation is of very fre- 
quent occurrence among girls and among women, and this 
form of erotic indulgence acts directly in lowering sexual 
sensibility, and not only limits the desire for love, but pre- 
vents a right physical response so that satisfaction may 
be gained from the normal sexual act. 

Is it not time that we women began to be frank.'' We 
have pretended to ourselves, and argued away from these 
questions far too long. Love cries out against our denials. 
Extreme passion may work ill, but the opposite extreme of 
the sacrifice of healthy natural instincts is as great an evil. 

I am driven back always to this : the immense danger of 
repression. For our hindrances lead inevitablj?^ to repres- 
sions, always dangerous; and these tend to set up deep 
indwelling disharmonies, and then the way is opened up to 
manifold evils that may be traced into many by-paths of 



840 MOTHERHOOD 

the after sexual life. And though I know there are many 
among my readers impatiently exclaiming that I am con- 
stantly dragging sex into everything, I assert that I do 
not drag it in : it is there. And for this reason alone it is 
certain that to formulate a system of education which 
ignores sex must lead to disaster. 

I would call attention again to the fact noted in the 
previous chapter that the sex impulse is never absent in 
any child, however young. The transformation of puberty 
is really a co-ordination of the individual sex-life that 
already exists. With the development of the bodily struc- 
ture and the marked changes in the sexual organs, there 
takes place a psychic growth which causes a perfectly 
natural seeking out of the young soul for experience and 
love. There is every possibility of morbid disturbance 
should this new order of development be hindered and not 
take place. And if this beautiful natural transformation 
is to succeed there must be no forcing back of the nature 
upon itself. The period of adolescence should crown and 
complete every organ and every faculty. No over- 
emphasis can be laid on the fateful issues that may follow 
to each girl from any mistakes in training at this period of 
adult birth, when the nature must find its new expression in 
the right direction of health or in the wrong direction of 
the abnormal. 

We are deceived so often by the outside appearance of 
things. The painful experiences of youth may disappear 
from the conscious memory, but they do not thereby cease 
to act as an influence directing the after life. Every 
mother and every teacher ought to understand this. Any 
hurt now done by our folly can never be undone. No ex- 
perience is entirely lost. What seems to have vanished from 



SEXUAL EDUCATION 341 

the consciousness has really passed into a sub-conscious- 
ness, where it lives on in an organised form as real as if it 
were still part of the conscious personality ; and although 
any experience may lie dormant, unknown to the conscious 
self, it may, and almost certainly will at some time, cause 
emotional reactions that continue without a known reason 
to excite and direct the outward ordinary life. 

Our easy, complacent and devastating folly in ignoring 
the special physical nature of girls, and the elaborate in- 
genuity with which the facts of life are hidden from them 
or glossed over by unhealthy sentiment, is the true cause 
of the physical and spiritual etiolation of womanhood. 
There is, I allege, murder to the girl's power to be herself 
— ^to fulfil her woman's destiny — in our evasions, our deadly 
silences, and sham presentation of life, conditioned in all 
cases by theory and never by the act of living. 

It is because I believe this that I am writing with all the 
power that I have against our schools which show the most 
coarse lack of understanding of the nature of the girl. 
I want new schools fitted to the needs of girls. The aim 
of education should be a general cohesion in all the different 
elements of the personality. And if the method is right, 
it will prove a way to greater happiness and fulness of 
growth. No longer will sex be held as a hindrance to life. 
I believe that almost everything in the future depends 
upon this. 

Life would be liberated. An instinct that continually is 
hindered and denied cannot easily develop for health ; and 
often, owing to these hindrances, the sexual life Is stunted ; 
then later the right and simple impulse to the performance 
of the sex act and its final consummation and enjoyment 
may be interfered with for ever and even prevented. Will 



342 MOTHERHOOD 

jou think what this means. In plain words, we are, by our 
false ideals and the wrong attitude towards the sexual life 
which conditions our system of education for girls, doing 
all that we can to prevent them from being women. I am 
not exaggerating ; I am trying to make you see what it is 
that is wrong with life. 

Every one who refuses to blink facts knows that the 
vast majority of marriages are unhappy owing to the cold- 
ness of the wife. It is certain that sexual anaesthesia to- 
day is present in many women, and there would seem, 
indeed, to be an increasing diminution of the strength of 
the sexual impulse. Any number of women are unable to 
give themselves up to the sex act in such a way as to derive 
from it real satisfaction and the gladness and health that 
it should give. This is a very grave matter. The evil 
would be less if these frigid women did not marry, but as a 
rule they do marry. It is a curious fact that women who 
sexually are cold are sought as wives with greater fre- 
quency than are more passionate women, probably because 
their easily maintained reserve acts as a stimulus to the 
man. Men are persistently blind in these matters. They 
want response to their own desire in their wives, but most 
of them are very much afraid of any woman who possesses 
the strong passion to enable them to give such response. 
The woman gains her fulfilment from the man when he 
gives her his child, but when she turns from him she leaves 
him unsatisfied.-^ The drama and the novel are burdened 
with this problem, which, indeed, intrudes itself on every 
hand. We are, by our wrong ideals, inducing an entirely 
perverted view, which regards physical desire as something 
of which women should be ashamed, and the sex act as a 
iSee pp. 185 and 298. 



SEXUAL EDUCATION 343 

thing in itself degrading and even disgusting — the nasty 
side of love ; something to be submitted to, indeed, in order 
to bear children, or for the sake of the loved man, whose 
passions must be allowed, but not for the health and desire, 
the delight and perfectment of the woman herself. This 
false view, I affirm again, is the blight that has been, and 
still is, the destroyer of woman, and through her, equally 
the destroyer of man. 

And this fear and denial of love, this separation between 
the sexes, is the serious side of the problem of marriage. 
For the hideous disguises and constant lying often made 
necessary to the husband, owing to the wife's entire failure 
to realise the physical necessities of love, makes domestic 
life an organised hypocrisy. We fight, and fight to be free, 
yet ever anew the antagonism lays fresh hold, it crops up 
in many and curious ways, imposing its poison and destroy- 
ing love — the deep, deep-hidden rage of unsatisfied men 
against women. The need for love will not often allow 
itself to be inhibited without claiming payment. And if 
desire so frequently manifests itself in abnormal forms of 
the coarsest and commonest dissipation, this is almost 
always to be explained by some hindrance opposed to its 
normal expression. When women face facts and realise 
this truth, many things in men's conduct will be clear that 
hitherto have been hidden from them. 

Again it may be thought that I am exaggerating; and 
there are, I know, other aspects of this question which just 
now I am neglecting. But the unreal and abysmal miscon- 
ception into which ohe sex has fallen with regard to the 
other — this horrible, grasping, backwash of shame — is, in 
large measure, the result of our pretence and the way in 
which women have been kept living with blinds drawn down 



SU MOTHERHOOD 

upon most of the unruly turbulence and elemental forces of 
life. It may also be held mistakenly that in what I have 
said I am writing against women ; that I am raising a be- 
lated cry for masculine prerogatives and standards of 
sexual conduct. But that is not so. I am, it is undeniable, 
writing against the attitude of the modern woman towards 
marriage, her coldness of response to passion and her sup- 
pression of the realities of sex; an attitude I deplore and 
hold to be destructive alike to the happiness of women and 
men and to the health of the race, as also to any practical 
moral life. But such coldness and atrophy of instinct, I be- 
lieve, has been imposed upon women by wrong education, the 
conditions of ignorance under which they marry and become 
mothers, and all the hindrances set around them, preventing 
them living out their lives from a sexual point of view. 

It is example and the ideal set before us which produces 
the formation of opinion and of character, and few mothers 
remember the inner discord which exists between what they 
teach their daughters about love and what they act them- 
selves in the daily life. And if the home is wrong, the 
school is, I think, much worse. In olden times, and still 
among primitive peoples — whose unconsidered actions are 
in many directions so much wiser than is our knowledge- 
girls were early given by matrons all the gathered wisdom 
of their sex pertaining to wifehood and motherhood; just 
the knowledge that we make it hard for them to gain. 
Could folly be greater than this ? 

With the decay of the specific traditions of the ideal of 
womanhood the idea of a general culture, neither male nor 
female, has tended to prevail. We touch here the deep 
roots of the evil. And what I wish to make plain is the in- 
evitable failure of an educational system which makes no 



SEXUAL EDUCATION 345 

kind of arrangement for the special care and training of 
girls during the most critical years of their growth. There 
is, I allege, in all our educational establishments a strange 
and most culpable lack of understanding of the nature of 
the girl and her functions as a woman. They model brains 
without proper consideration of bodies, and with frightful 
convention repress from the seeking young the realities of 
love, and treat as secret, almost as something to be ignored, 
the functions connected with a girl's sexual life. 

The mistake here is so far-reaching that I find it difficult 
to write calmly. For again I must assert that what we are 
doing is really to teach our girls a shameful denial of their 
womanhood. I wish that the power of my pen was 
stronger, so that I might bring a stinging consciousness 
of all the terrible mischief that is being done to the knowl- 
edge of every mother and every teacher. 

How many of us have ourselves suffered ? But our mem- 
ories are strangely short. We forget, in our complacence 
and lazy, vicarious optimism, the dark places that im- 
prisoned our young growing souls, haunts of gloom and 
despair that were never lit by a ray of sympathetic enlight- 
enment from our sadder and wiser, but so forgetful, elders. 
We forget the grievous wounds to our self-respect. We 
forget the duality of soul ; those oscillations between fear 
and disgust and curiosity and desire, with, perhaps, furtive 
trembling concessions to a power we did not understand, to 
be followed by morbid reactions of loathing, both of the 
mysterious impulse and of ourselves, that survive in those 
deadly disharmonies that are beginning to engage the 
attention of modern psychologists, and act to-day in our 
adult consciousness to war with the sum of unity which is 
happiness. 



346 MOTHERHOOD 

Yes, we all have forgotten. Yet none the less has this 
shameful early struggle left us fettered and seeking, and 
we have no window to inform us we are in prison. It has 
warped our natures, till, when in after years we look at 
Love, we behold, not the shining impersonation of the 
Life-force, but seeing double, view a monstrous Siamese 
twin of two figures. Lust and Sentimentality, a satyr bound 
to a wan angel by a navel-cord of procreative necessity. 
And often there is no rest, no cessation from a conflict that 
has left us helpless, so that for us love is moulded round a 
core of diseased desires. 

It makes us examine our hearts. Is it to be so for ever? 

We forget that perhaps four-fifths of the misery that 
follows in the train of sex-fulfilment is due to this mental 
and moral "diphobia" acquired in the days of adolescence 
in the unassisted struggle with the awakening and entirely 
misunderstood sex-impulse. We may forget, but few and 
happy are they who escape the effects of that encounter. 
According to our temperaments it has made us sedulous 
puritans and unconscious hypocrites, passionless neuters, 
or careless cynics and voluptuaries. And we are all of us 
to some extent marked and dirtied for ever. Deep and in- 
effaceable in us are the records of our disastrous early 
grapple with a great organic impulse which no one taught 
us to understand. 

I am strongly of opinion that the tendency, so prevalent 
among women, to regard love as a twofold thing, one part 
of which is physical and evil and the other part spiritual 
and good, is almost diagnostic in an individual of a dishar- 
mony arising from an ancient reaction against sex, caused 
by some hindering influence or shock, encountered at the 
opening of the conscious sexual life. 



SEXUAL EDUCATION 347 

The tremendous force that awakens in soul and body in 
these early years, and that with wise control and compre- 
hension might be tended till in due course it flowers into 
Love, is early shorn of its splendour. Its whispered intima- 
tions of wondrous things to come fall on deaf ears. Taught 
to regard it as a malignant enemy that may destroy, in- 
stead of the most sacred and wonderful agency in human 
life, we enter into a hopeless struggle to eliminate the most 
basal part of our nature, or fawn before it in furtive and 
shameful surrender. 

So most of us, embittered by the degradation of this 
struggle, whether it he won or lost, grow up to view with 
distrust what we absurdly call the "physical side of love." 
We, and especially women, accept it resignedly as an un- 
avoidable baseness in the grain of Love. We forget that 
the baseness is in us and not in Love. Love has no physical 
side, or mental side, or spiritual side. It is a unity upon 
which we lay sacrilegious hands when we make an artificial 
separation into physical and spiritual. 

We do this because of our own impurity, and because of 
the hurts we have suffered. We can no longer look at Love 
without furtively scanning his garments for the stains of 
Lust. We have created Lust. Lust is a morbid by-product 
in the evolution of Love. 

It is this that we have suffered. 



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XVI 

A CONTINUATION OP THE LAST CHAPTER, WITll 
AN ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 

An attempt to find the remedy — What is the real root of the evil — 
The young woman of the new generation — The years since the 
war began — An examination of present conditions — ^What is likely 
to happen when peace comes — The independent woman — The 
Commissioner's Report of the National Birth-Rate Investiga- 
tion, 1916 — The failure in our lives — Where is the real root of 
the evil — The whole educational system of girls in our homes and 
in our schools is wrong — The importance of menstruation — In- 
fluence of conventionality — Wrong ideals set before girls— The 
destruction working in our midst — Fear of sex directs our educa- 
tional system — The remedy to begin in our schools — We must 
educate girls to be women — Menstruation and the girl's special 
sexual life must be emphasised and not as now ignored — Adoles- 
cent schools — The sexual life of the adolescent girl — The diflGi- 
culties that must be faced — Opposition on the part of women — 
Motherhood to be saved — Regeneration of the girl's instincts 
through consciousness — The hope with which we may look to the 
future — Motherhood will triumph. 



CHAPTER XVI 

A CONTINUATION OF THE LAST CHAPTER, WITH 
AN ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 

"With fear and trembling take care of the heart of the people; 
that is the root of the matter in education — that is the highest in 
education." — K'ukg fu 'Tzu. 

It is, of course, easy to write of these evils, the difficult 
thing is to find the remedy. And the question I now wish to 
put squarely is this : Where is the real root of the evil, what 
is wrong in our educational ideals that accounts for our 
failure to develop the best and happiest type of women? 
You may, of course, deny this, and assert that we do not 
fail, but that will not alter facts. I say we are creating a 
race of work-efficient and highly educated, but unsatisfied 
women, whose very independence betrays their sorrow. This 
is a very serious matter. It would seem that our young 
women have now for the first time realised their power in 
outside things. War has acted quickly in facilitating their 
economic emancipation. But I find it hard not to think 
that this may involve a cost which their womanhood will 
not bear without injury more or less profound. Women 
are being sold to work in the same way that formerly men 
were sold. And though no one can know the results, I am 
very far from sharing the sense of satisfaction expressed 
by so many to-day : I fear for the girls I see in such num- 
bers in every place of work a deadening of response to life 
- — a further clog and degradation of womanly feeling and 
instincts. And as I have said again and again, my fear 

351 



S52 MOTHERHOOD 

is much deeper, because this externalisation of life is no 
new thing. I could add more, much more; but words — 
what are they in the face of facts ! Last week I was in con- 
versation with a young and comely tram conductress. She 
was married : I asked her if she had children. She answered 
me : "My goodness, No !" and then added, "One doesn't 
want babies on this job." One dares not generalise too 
largely, yet for so long women, in this industrially blinded 
land, have been struggling to gain the world at the pay- 
ment of losing themselves. 

The young women of the new generation are full of 
distrust, the most demoralising of influences. By this I 
do not mean that they distrust themselves ; they do not. 
What they do distrust is instinct and emotion, with a cor- 
responding over-valuation of intellectualism and of mar- 
ketable work-power ; and from this distrust there has fol- 
lowed necessarily a breaking away from fixed standards, 
with a loss of any steadying ideal. This, I think, is the 
essential trouble, sending them very far astray from the 
facts of life. 

Look at the women you may see in all classes of society. 
You may see them hastening to and from their work ; you 
may see them in the streets each evening or in every place 
of amusement. How many bear upon their brows this 
stamp of a nature unfixed of purpose, in the expression of 
their face as well as the body movements, in their restless- 
ness and noisy happiness is the sign of disharmonies 
aroused, a nature strained and failing in the fulfilment of 
its functions. One feels that as women these young girls 
of the present generation have lost something, lost it so 
completely that they know no longer what they desire. 

I should, however, like to make it very clear that I am 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 353 

not disparaging women, nor do I fail to admire all they 
have achieved in difficult positions. There is no need to 
re-tell the oft-told and much praised facts of what they 
have done in these years since the war began. There can 
be no shadow of doubt as to the efficiency and value of the 
work of the thousands of women at present engaged in 
many and varied branches of labour. But what I fear is 
the waste of the struggle should it continue for any period 
of years. Let us except this hard working of women as a 
necessary evil of warfare, demanding at the same time spe- 
cial protection and special provision for child-bearers. 
But do not let us fall into the error of regarding such con- 
ditions as in themselves good and desirable, leading, as I 
believe must follow, to a further obliteration of sex, with 
its differences and wise separation. 

Difficult as at present is the problem, we need to under- 
stand that we cannot afford to be wasteful of the strength 
of w^omen. We are being wasteful. The physiological 
life even of the unmarried woman ought to handicap her 
in almost every kind of work. Long hours of standing, 
the lifting of heavy weights, any kind of drain on the 
nervous power, cannot fail to do harm. There are days 
when every young girl and woman who may have to bear 
children, however strong, ought to release tension, to step 
aside from work to maintain full health. I am filled with 
impatience at our pretence on this question of women's 
health. There is a difference between the work capacity of 
the woman and the work capacity of the man. Sex must 
play a far larger part, making far stronger claims on the 
strength of the girl and the woman than it ever does in 
the lives of boys and men. It is vain to assume that be- 
cause women are willing, and apparently able, to do the 



354 MOTHERHOOD 

same work now as men in the past have done, that, there- 
fore, it is wise to allow them to do it. The price of the 
violent energy, so wastefully being poured out, will have 
to be paid. Countless women and girls are using up now 
the nervous energy and strength of which they are merely 
the pilots and guardians; the health and calm of spirit 
which should be stored and transmitted to generations to 
come. 

The increased activity and exertion daily demanded 
from child-bearers must be anti-social in its racial effects. 
Either these girls, constantly stimulated, over-excited, and 
robbed of the tranquillity they need, will bear enfeebled 
children, or, what is more likely, through the direct pre- 
mium placed on childlessness, fewer and fewer children will 
be born, and from this there may tend to follow a further 
deadening and even a crushing out of the maternal instinct. 
Children will not be wanted. 

I pointed out in the earlier chapters of my book^ that 
such a transformation of impulse may take place. The 
parental instinct is not fixed, and disuse is the swiftest 
way to decay. Think what this must mean to the life 
values of the future. I believe it is not possible to esti- 
mate how far-reaching may be the results of what is now 
being done so quickly and so recklessly. By our absurd 
denials and our ignorance we shall have brought down upon 
us this evil — our punishment for conceiving sex in women 
as something too terrible to be faced in its reality. 

Let us understand what it is that we shall be doing. 
We are built up of habits just as a house is built up of 
bricks. And what motherhood is going to be in the future 
depends on our desires and our action to-day. 
1 See pp. 100-102. 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 355 

A sound nation has for its essential condition healthy 
children — yes, and many of them — and healthy mothers 
to bear and to rear them. We know this. But what are 
the facts? We find more and more young women turning 
away from motherhood. They are marrying in larger 
numbers just now, for war has turned men into heroes 
and this has made marriage popular. But we may not 
count too much on this, for no longer does marriage rtiean 
the bearing of children and the founding of a family. The 
wife no longer is comparable to the fruitful vine, no longer 
are children like olive plants about the table of the house. 
The blessings of the old sweet poem fail to stir our de- 
sires. Babies are not wanted. 

The volume of evidence and the observations made by 
the Commissioners' Report of the National Birth-Rate In- 
vestigation, 1916, which lies upon my desk, cannot be read 
without a sense of almost hopeless depression. A dark 
picture is revealed of men and women harried and driven 
by the sex instinct within them; the relation of the hus- 
band and the wife made hateful from a perpetual fear of 
the natural consequences of birth. The struggle is but too 
clearly apparent in every section of society. The evidence 
discloses that the prevention of conception is growing 
steadily and rapidly, for though it began with and, for a 
time, was practised only by the well-to-do, it is now spread- 
ing downwards to the poorest, amongst whom the practice 
of abortion has for long been extensively Used. Dr. Mary 
Scharlieb, whose report is, perhaps, the most interesting of 
all the Commissioners,, states that in the working classes 
there are five abortions to every one live birth. 

What sordid facts this Report reveals ! What a failure 
it proves our life! Is there any use in talking of raising 



S56 MOTHERHOOD 

the birth-rate until these things are changed? Is our land 
fit to receive the children? Has not the child the right to 
demand from its parents that its birth shall be looked on 
as something more than an unfortunate mistake? 

I know, of course, the difficulties which face the parents, 
among which economic difficulties are important, arising 
from the competitive capitalistic system by which all our 
lives are entangled. Yet I feel that these considerations, 
though they cannot be neglected and increase the evil, alone 
are not responsible; that the cause lies deeper and is de- 
pendent on the desires of the mind; that apart from any 
economic causes, and even assuming that every child could 
be better born and with a happy life secured to it, there 
would yet be much of the problem that would remain un- 
solved. And what I am trying all this time to make plain 
is this: If we wish to get rid of the atrophy that is in- 
creasingly present in the instincts of our young women, 
and quicken their response to passion, with its desire for 
motherhood, we must first get rid of our wrong values of 
what is good in life and makes for enduring happiness; 
and to do this we must change our educational methods, 
the training in the home and in the school, and conditions 
of work that are their parent. There can be no help and 
no change, at least I cannot see any, except to alter our 
ideals. Nothing else of any wide value can be done until 
these are changed. 

In the name of common sense and of sanity let us get 
to the real bottom of this matter. To do anything at all 
we must begin at the beginning, where the wrong is started. 
It is absurd to go on crying out against the shirking of 
motherhood, while at the same time, in the education of 
our girls and afterwards in the arrangements we make 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 357 

for their working life, we show a complete evasion of the 
function most intimately comiected with motherhood. 
That is where the clue to the trouble lies. The whole edu- 
cational system in our homes and in our schools, as well 
as the conditions in our workshops and houses of business, 
is wrong. It discourages motherhood very heavily. And 
the rational thing for us to do in the matter is not to grow 
eloquent about a declining birth-rate, or to blame women 
for not desiring to be mothers, but rather to make intel- 
ligent changes so as to minimise to the young the dis- 
couragement that by our teaching and our actions we have 
hitherto given to motherhood. 

And the first step towards this must be, I am certain, to 
banish from the consciousness of every girl all feeling of 
shame, and all concealments connected with her function 
of menstruation. In other words, we have to face the 
facts of a girl's sexual life. This is not going to be easy. 

In the immediate past our attitude of hiding on these 
questions was due to reasons of prudishness in regard to 
all natural functions, and notably menstruation — the rubi- 
con in the life of every girl, which first brings or, I ought 
to say, should bring, full realisation that life for her is 
separate and needs to take a different course from the life 
of the boy and the man. 

This truth has been disliked so much that in practice 
it has been disregarded. The wrong is started early and 
is continued throughout the sexual life. The real con- 
trolling force in the education of the girl is the mother; 
and motherhood has failed. Girls, with an almost criminal 
neglect, have been left without any wise preparation for 
the first menstruation, upon the regular establishment of 
which function their health in the future must depend. 



358 MOTHERHOOD 

Many girls, being seriously frightened or stirred to rebel- 
lion and anger, have done foolish actions, and through 
neglected hygiene evil is begun that never can be undone. 
This is no over-statement. The first few menstruations 
have a far greater influence not only on the body, but also 
on the brain and the soul of a girl than do those that fol- 
low later when the sexual health is better established. 
Every mother and teacher ought to know and heed this. 

At best, and even when instructed by their mothers, girls 
have been taught to regard this function as a troublesome 
illness that must be suffered with patience ; such a view, of 
course, being a relic of the supposed curse laid upon the 
woman's sex. Nor can it be said that even to-day there is 
any improvement when quite different ideals prevail re- 
garding woman's place and her vocation. For the new 
emancipation has brought with it a false view that girls 
should be educated in the same way as boys, and should 
be brought up in the pretence that it is right and possible 
for them to work and play at all times like boys and to be 
as independent of their sexual life as boys can afford to be. 

Now, it does not need much imagination to understand 
the harm of such teaching. The menstrual function — 
which really marks the sex of the girl and fits her for 
motherhood — is ignored as if its occurrence were of no 
importance. And such an attitude of dislike and hiding 
necessarily causes a feeling of shame, more or less deep 
according to the temperament of the girl. From the very 
first sex is presented in the shape of something to be 
despised and desperately fought against, something secret 
and disgusting. Even at this early stage disharmony en- 
ters into the young and sensitive soul. 

Some girls revolt in the very depths of their being, while 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 359 

the common feelings aroused are expressed by such words 
as aversion and dislike, anger and shame. Do you not 
see now the harm that is done? How sadly we are sowing 
for the future. For what can be the result except to 
teach our girls a shameful disrespect for themselves. What 
wonder is there that many girls are stirred to rebellion 
which takes the outward form of resolutely ignoring their 
monthly periods, and the fact that they are girls. ' And 
the immediate result is a general lowering in the standard 
of sexual health. 

I shall be told that this is not true. But I am writing 
of what I know. Menstruation is a perfectly natural 
function and every girl should be taught so to regard it. 
But at its start it does exercise a very disturbing effect on 
the whole system and character. And the folly that pre- 
tends that in these early years special care is not required 
at the monthly periods cannot be too strongly condemned. 
For the harm is deeper and further reaching than the 
physical hurt, though certainly in our folly we are making 
invalids of the future mothers of the race. Harm in many 
cases is done to the after sex expression ; harm which prob- 
ably is never recognised, and about which the ordinary 
parent and teacher are densely ignorant and optimistic. 
How little do we consider the consequences of our acts? I 
say there is no limit and no end to the evil that we are per- 
mitting. And the most fearful thing about it is that it 
all seems so wantonly needless. 

The always difficult passage of the girl into the woman 
is alarming only to the girl who knows nothing about her- 
self and her sexual life. Just as far as she understands 
does recoil and resentment and shame become needless. 
Rightly taught, she will learn to regard her special func- 



360 MOTHERHOOD 

tion, not as something to be hidden and ignored, but as the 
sign of the changes that now are taking place in her body 
- — healthy natural changes that will fit her one day for 
love and wifehood and motherhood. Then, indeed, her 
shame and her aversion will be converted into pride. Un- 
derstanding, she will have a fitting reverence for herself. 
She will now know why she is under certain restrictions, 
and has at the times of her monthly periods to refrain 
from overwork and all strain, and to give up some pleas- 
ures and excitements ; she will do this gladly in order that 
her development into womanhood may be without pain, 
healthy and complete. 

I believe firmly that this change in our attitude to men- 
struation — a change that will emphasise its importance to 
health and its connection with fit motherhood — a change 
that must start at the beginning of the girl's conscious 
sexual life, is absolutely necessary to the development of a 
higher motherhood. At least, if it does not come, I can 
have no hope at all. You cannot gather fruit from a tree 
that is unhealthy at its root. And you cannot have glad 
motherhood while you start out by despising the function 
most sacredly connected with motherhood. We must un- 
derstand this. Until we do understand it, and then act in 
the practical way that will cause us to change our teaching 
to all young girls, we shall find women in ever-increasing 
numbers turning away from motherhood, and wasting in 
external things the realities of love and life. 

How can healthy womanhood be possible within the limits 
and wrong ideals of our present system, and how can they 
fail to give rise to continuous restlessness? I declare once 
more and plainly that we are raising a generation of girls 
— those with whom the duties of wifehood and motherhood 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 361 

should reside — who have instincts atrophied by dull studies, 
to be followed by deadening work. I hold that this is a 
matter of the gravest concern, not only for women and 
men and their individual happiness in union one with the 
other, but is also what will decide the future of this land 
and empire. 

But few among us understand the destruction that is 
working in our midst. We do not recognise the symptoms 
that mark the disharmony in the lives of the great major- 
ity of the girls and young women of the present generation. 
War has but increased the mischief. Independence in ma- 
terial things has given triumph to that rebellion which 
our mistaken training and wrong ideal had started long 
ago smouldering in the souls of our daughters. To-day 
youth is in demand; the young girl can fill every place. 
And youth has risen fearlessly and splendidly to every op- 
portunity, but so quickly as not to have time to consider 
how much is being trampled underfoot. The danger of 
speed — the filling of every moment of time, always a mis- 
take made by women — has been intensified by the war. The 
war race has provided the opportunity to live riotously and 
wastefully. 

Of course, it is we of the older generation — the mothers 
— who are to blame. We have left our daughters in a 
dangerous position ; we did not see where modern educa- 
tion, with its effort to obliterate sex, must inevitably lead. 

Education may be either a most helpful or a most dan- 
gerous process. And what is most to be feared is the shut- 
in instincts that tend to twist the nature from its simple 
fulfilment. There is something essentially harmful in any 
failure or wrong expression of a special function. Now, 
we have insisted upon repressions, and what we believed to 



362 MOTHERHOOD 

be a high moral and efficient working character for girls, 
not knowing that what we so mistakenly were straining for 
was really something very like an entire absence of any 
kind of womanly character. The real nature of girls is 
wild, and our fears have been very great. And for this 
reason have we held that the nakedness of the adolescent's 
new-born womanhood must be clothed with conventional- 
ities and draped with culture. 

It is this fear of sex that directs our educational system : 
there is too much drill and too much strain. Girls' schools 
are governed too much, for girls need, not less, but more 
liberty than boys. The teachers are dull and narrow in 
their own outlook and in their experience of life; they are 
not trained to understand the needs of adolescent girls, 
only to teach them facts that as a rule are of no real 
service ; they do not trouble to train the inner and hidden 
instincts that really form character, they do not even look 
for them ; they reck nothing of early development or late, 
of the presence of strong passion or its absence ; they have 
no kind of understanding of the unceasing action of sex, 
forcing its expression in unconscious acts, which alone 
give the clue to character ; of all this (the only knowledge 
that matters) the teachers are profoundly ignorant; but 
they measure out girl-humanity for the conventional stand- 
ard of efficiency like a dressmaker measures out her ma- 
terial with a yard measure. There is no thought, at least 
none is betrayed, that the school is a preparation for liv- 
ing. No kind of training is given for the part the girls 
will have to play in the life of sex for their own health and 
happiness and the regeneration of the race. The sexual 
life is persistently ignored. 

I recall reading somewhere — I do not remember the ex- 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 363 

act connection — how an official of a college for girls was 
questioned by a visitor as to the advantage gained by the 
students in their after life from a university training. She 
answered: "One third of the students profit by it, another 
third gain some little good, while the remaining third are 
failures." "And what becomes of the failures .P" was the 
question asked, while the answer given was this : "Oh, they 
marry !" Now, I do not know if this excellent story can be 
accepted as a fact, but it does point to a contempt for 
marriage and its duties — a contempt for woman's sex and 
for her own work — ^which I believe is present in the thought 
and attitude, even if not acknowledged openly, among the 
majority of educationalists. This is a very serious matter. 

The remedy, then, has to begin in our schools. We must 
control education with a finer sense of its value to life. 
And to do this we must accept the extreme importance of 
sex, and guard those differences which separate the girl 
from the boy. 

As a first movement of reform, I would recommend one 
to three years' rest from the usual school work for every 
girl, during the period when her sexual life is becoming 
established. This is not, of course, to advocate idleness. 
I am not upholding any form of invalidism for girls ; the 
adolescent always should have plenty of healthy occupa- 
tion, but that is a far diiFerent thing from the strain of 
the ordinary school course, foolishly arranged for girls on 
the same lines as that for boys, and without any regard to 
the important function of menstruation. There should be 
attached to every school for girls a special class for adoles- 
cents, and this should be the most important class in the 
school. At the onset of puberty the girls would enter this 
class, in which they would stay for two years or longer. 



364 MOTHERHOOD 

The sexual life would not be, as now it is, ignored ; rather 
the chief work of the school would be the healthy establish- 
ment of the menstrual function, upon which the future 
well-being of the girl depends, and to the interests of which 
everything else should for a time be secondary. 

There must be a new valuation of education, with an 
entire change of attitude, which will make possible more 
openness between the teacher and her pupils. The diffi- 
culties here will, I know, be great. If the mothers do not 
know how to help their daughters, and usually they do not ; 
if the girls do not know how to help themselves, and dumb 
and untaught they are helpless, the task of the teachers 
cannot fail to be hard. And especially will this be 
the case wherever the mother has failed in her duty 
and a girl has received no kind of sexual training in the 
home. 

I know of what I am writing here, and how real is the 
prejudice that will have to be overcome. In my own school 
I was met with this trouble again and again. The girls 
resented any mention of their menstrual function, and ex- 
pressed often real anger and disgust when I required them 
to tell me the dates of their monthly periods, so that I 
might see they had extra food, more rest, and lighter 
studies. The answer that usually was given to me was 
this : ''My mother never wanted me to tell her ; I took no 
notice when I was at home." What an unconscious indict- 
ment of the mothers ! Often it was after long and patient 
effort only that I gained my way, and brought my girls to 
speak to me naturally about this function. I had the very 
hardest work to free their thoughts from the deeply im- 
planted feelings of shame and disgust: in many cases I 
failed altogether, and I cannot, indeed, be sure that I ever 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 365 

fully succeeded. Of course, my failures were the result of 
harm that had been done much earlier in the home. 

It was at this time of my life, now long years ago, when 
these considerations were forced upon my attention by 
my failures with my elder pupils, that I was first led to 
desire special classes for girls to enter at the age of 
puberty, where the life, the work, and the aims were sepa- 
rate and quite different from the ordinary school. It is 
so much easier to do the wise thing, if what you are do- 
ing is a matter of course, and not something you start for 
yourself. 

I am convinced of the value that would be gained for life 
from the plan I am advocating. I would begin with these 
special classes, but I want more than that to be done. A 
much better course would be that separate adolescent 
schools should be provided, preferably in the country, where 
all work as well as play could be done out of doors. All 
girls would enter before the commencement of puberty, 
and would stay in one of these special adolescent schools 
for two or three years or longer. The work would be or- 
ganised entirely to meet the needs of the individual girl; 
there must be no set courses of study, no hide-bound rules, 
and above all no examinations to be crammed for. In my 
opinion, which was formed from my own experience in my 
school, girls should do hardly any steady work for one 
year before and two years after puberty ; they cannot, I 
am certain, work continuously without peril. Mental over- 
work or any kind of strain destroys the nervous resistance 
and tends to that irritable weakness which makes the rank- 
est ground for all sexual ill health, and may work to es- 
tablish evil habits in ways not yet openly recognised. The 
kind of work done should be chosen by the girl herself; 



see MOTHERHOOD 

there should be far more opportunity for rest and for 
play, and, while guarding against opportunities for harm- 
ful idleness, any kind of mental or bodily strain must be 
avoided. Hard study, if this is necessary, will come later 
at the close of this special school period. But I plead for 
all girls during the difficult time of their metamorphosis 
from the girl to the woman to leave them much more largely 
than we do at present to nature and to themselves. 

The adolescent girl often is thought to be lazy, and 
when called upon to work she shows an exasperating dul- 
ness and inattention. This is a natural condition when the 
girl is passing through the langour of physical growth; 
she is overcome, not by listlessness, but by the strain of 
her awakening senses, and the inattention of the mind is, 
as a rule, but a symptom of the mysterious and difficult 
maturing of the brain. The apparent apathy is not real: 
all the girl's power, all energy of body and mind is being 
consumed by the overwhelming force of the half-conscious 
life of instincts that are ripening within. The young girl 
for the first time feels, though very rarely does she under- 
stand, the power of her nature stirring her soul. And any 
seeming backwardness in studies during these years, as 
should be known by the wise teacher, leads afterwards to 
finer progress, if only the right opportunity of unstrained 
development is given. But it is this harmony of growth 
that we have been disturbing as with persistent zeal we have 
educated from the outside. Little wonder that .we have 
failed. I have spoken before of the wide difference that 
is present between the nature of the boy and that of the 
girl, and though I speak with hesitation on a question that 
is too complex to permit dogmatic assertions, the boy has, 
I think, a much more healthy and conscious knowledge of 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 367 

himself ; a girl understands herself less, and has a very dim 
notion of the motives of her conduct. This leads to very 
certain danger. The thoughts of most girls are occupied 
with vague and romantic longings, much heightened by the 
nonsense written on love in the books girls are allowed to 
read, stories from which every hint of wholesome reality 
has been omitted. Such false feelings, dominating the 
girl's mind at the time of the adolescent crisis, work grave 
evil. 

While always thinking of love most girls know almost 
nothing of what love really is ; and certainly the strain 
of any sudden chance investigation of the physical facts 
of sex is a very near danger. 

That is one reason why, in a previous section, I have 
urged so strongly that sexual enlightenment be given to 
the girl while she is still at the age when sex has no strong 
personal significance. 

The importance of early knowledge is not sufficiently 
recognised. If from childhood there has been frankness 
between the girl and her mother, and they have spoken 
together openly of sex and the facts of birth, it will cer- 
tainly have happened that the chief emphasis in the 
mother's instruction will have been placed upon the rela- 
tion between the child and herself .■'^ Such teaching may 
well prove a great safeguard. The personal, or "pleas- 
ure," element in sex will in this way not be too soon forced 
and stamped on the girl's consciousness ; it will be, as it 
should, deferred until the age of passion comes. Even 

1 This is the opinion of St'anley Hall, whose wise work on Adoles- 
cence should be read by all mothers. In this connection he beauti- 
fully writes: "In this way the girl will be anchored in time to what 
is really the essential thing, viz. reproduction and the carrying be- 
neath her heart and then bearing children, which are the hope of 
the world." 



368 MOTHERHOOD 

then the result of the earher teaching will be present to 
direct the desires. Love and marriage will not be divorced 
entirely from the thought of motherhood, as so disastrously 
happens with many girls to-day. 

It is a question I must leave, though it is one on which 
much more might be said. For I believe we have here a 
further explanation of the triumph of the egoistical sexual 
desires over the parental instincts of sacrifice. I am alto- 
gether convinced of the deep and wide-reaching harm that 
is done, in ways that have never yet been recognised, from 
the sexual ignorance of girls and our shameful conceal- 
ments and untrue education. And I have felt often that 
the brutal frankness of boys in sex matters, bad as cer- 
tainly it sometimes is in its after coarsening effect, in many 
ways is better in its results than the confused silence and 
sentiment with which most girls are surrounded; it is, at 
least, in nearer touch with the facts of life. 

I have had considerable experience with adolescent girls. 
I am sure that their thoughts are more occupied with sex 
than they know themselves, or is recognised by the adults 
who are with them. I am speaking here of the normal 
girl in whom the sexual impulse takes definite form during 
the early years of puberty. It will need all our wisdom 
and patience to be able to help the girl now, if we have 
left her in the darkness of her soul before. She is suffering 
the anguish of youth, reaching out for the unknown ideal, 
which she cannot grasp, cannot even distinguish or con- 
ceive. There are, of course, other types of girls — girls of 
delicate and sensitive temperament in whom sexual devel- 
opment for long may be delayed. This may be due to 
various causes, but is most frequently a result of ex- 
cessive mental strain from over-pressure or unsuitable 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 369 

work at the onset of puberty, tending to de-normalise the 
sex-life. 

Now, to some parents and teachers, not understanding 
the results, it may seem that this is an end to be desired, and 
that such a postponement of the sex-life to the years when 
the girl is older will be a safeguard against evils. This, I 
believe, is a mistake. The sex feelings are not absent ,but 
hidden, and the result too often is a profound melan- 
choly and a dull heaviness which may continue to spoil 
life. And when the time comes, as come it must, and the 
long-repressed feelings force an expression, the sex-strain 
is often very great, and troubles frequently arise that 
could not have happened except for our interference with 
the right process of nature. 

Of course, whatever we do, we must expect often to fail. 
We are not dealing with anything that can be fixed; and 
our methods as well as our success must vary with each 
individual girl. It is this personal element that has not 
been considered. And this is why there is such need for 
a higher and different standard in our schools, and of more 
knowledge and understanding on the part of all who are 
connected with the training of girls. I know of nothing 
that can prepare the girl but the early teaching of the 
mother, but I think in the later adolescent years it is the 
wise teacher who can better carry on the work. 

The task of the educator ought to be plain : to encour- 
age all girls in their natural reaching out for experience 
and knowledge of themselves, not to smother all that is in- 
dividual in them under set lessons, necessary perhaps and 
helpful at other periods of growth, but now I am certain 
harmful, dulling the character with falsehood and the 
bodies with constraints, and wearying the minds with over- 



370 MOTHERHOOD 

strain through long hours of drudgery into a dull ac- 
ceptance. 

The worst influence of the school Is Its Isolation from 
life. Consciousness, not instruction, should be the aim of 
education. Yet in all directions our girls have been led 
and forced into following material consciousness, and, at 
the same time, they have increasingly lost consciousness of 
themselves. Realisation of one's own being— how to pro- 
duce this by means of education — that is the question. 
What answer are we going to give.'' 

Such a rest period in specially adapted schools as I am 
here advocating would serve not only to establish the health 
of adolescent girls and fit them for vigourous womanhood, 
it would, as I believe, change their ideal and remake life. 
In such surroundings fitted to their o^ti needs, and with 
a different valuation of the future set before them, they 
would have a truer sense of self-consciousness ; they would 
come to understand in quite a new way the responsibilities 
and high glory of being women. 

The difficulties, of course, are numerous. And, first of 
all, it will not be easy to find the right teachers for these 
adolescent schools. They will need to be specially trained ; 
but training alone will not serve. The teachers must have 
had a much wider experience of life than is usual to women ; 
they ought to have genius and a passionate love of chil- 
dren : they need to be mothers in spirit. 

Necessarily, the expense of such teachers and of these 
special schools, which should be established in great num- 
bers and with no thought of sparing the cost, will be 
heavy. It will be thought, I know, by many that this fact 
alone makes the plan impracticable. I can answer only, 
that any expenditure that will produce fit and glad mothers 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 371 

for the future is an expense that will be met by a wise 
nation. 

I would urge that this question be approached from 
a practical attitude. On all sides concern is being felt at 
the decline in the birth-rate, which has fallen one-third in 
the last thirty-five years. The Royal Commission that I 
have referred to already has made its investigation, and 
issued its report. Much has been written on the problem, 
and many guesses made as to the vaguely understood 
causes. The economists find all the evil in economic con- 
ditions ; the religious say that it is our morality that is at 
fault. Many are the remedies suggested, a few of which 
are practical and good. And so urgent is the matter felt 
to be, now that war with its destruction of life is teaching 
us a little more the value of life, that changes, long called 
for, but hitherto seemingly unattainable, shortly may be 
made in our divorce and marriage laws. The sharp and 
cruel line drawn between the married and the unmarried 
mother will at last waver and break on its rotten supports. 
Already the saving of child life has become a matter of 
such urgent need that much necessary reform is being ac- 
complished. There is little doubt that these valuable move- 
ments will go on. 

Yet, I think, we are failing to attack the real cause, and 
unless we do attack it there, right at the beginning, we 
shall go on as we usually do, experimenting in this way 
and in that, doing one thing and leaving another undone, 
and we shall only tinker and fuss and then wonder why we 
fail. Blind and fools ! we fail, and shall go on failing, be- 
cause we do not educate our girls and act in life in such 
a way as will encourage motherhood. 

I have put out my idea : I have tried to be as explicit as 



372 MOTHERHOOD 

possible in suggesting the remedy. I am conscious now of 
opposition that will be raised. I shall be told that my 
plan, which seems so simple, of educating girls to be women 
is not practicable. And then I shall be reminded of the 
immense surplus of women in this country who are unable 
to marry and live a full and healthy life — a surplus large 
before the war, enormously greater now.^ 

Let me state at once that I am very far indeed from 
forgetting this great host of enforced celibate women. I 
have spoken more than once in my book about them, and I 
am not now concerned with their position. What I want 
is to save the future. Many girls and women to-day are 
finding their work and the fresh excitements of independ- 
ence sufficient to gladden life. They do not claim pity; 
yet this satisfaction that women are feeling is the danger 
that threatens the future. It is just because these women, 
whose desires will be fixed on work and away from mother- 
hood, must be here among us, in every place, especially in 
our schools and in our factories — everywhere in contact 
with youth — that I am pleading with all the power that 
I have for a quite changed training for the young girls 
of the coming generation of women. I fear greatly the 
influence that I believe must grow up if industrial values 
of what is good in life are unchecked, and the desire of 
women is turned more from motherhood and the life that 
matters to the outside details of existence. 

Life must be re-shaped, and the first step is the percep- 
tion of an idea. We want belief, for life must have a 
structure — the scaffolding on which we may build. And 
each individual woman among us may not be trusted to 

1 1 find it estimated that by the end of 191 T, of the persons aged 
from fifteen to forty- four in the United Kingdom, the females will 
exceed the males by nearly two millions. 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 373 

make her own structure — to convey and carry whatever it 
may be that she desires. Such selfishness makes any per- 
manent building impossible. That is why in this genera- 
tion we have lost our ideal. 

The previous age fixed its attention on the reform of 
injustice in the outward relations of men and women, on 
the regulation of capital and labour, on the equality of 
the sexes and the improvement of the conditions of life — 
efforts which culminated naturally in socialism. My work 
is one dealing essentially with an attitude towards life. I 
would protest against the want of respect for the ultimate 
emotional aspects of life, the love of man for woman and 
of woman for her child — a want of respect which makes 
it impossible to tell a young girl openly the reason why 
she must not over-exert herself at the time of her monthly 
periods. I confess to little patience with this effort to 
escape sex. Everything connected with birth and mater- 
nity has to be hidden and mentioned only in whispers. We 
have forced the attention of girls away from motherhood, 
fixing their desires on work and independence. Obedient 
and inexperienced, they have followed our guiding. We 
have taught them to regard the physical attraction which 
they ought to feel towards men as not nice, thereby asso- 
ciating in their young minds all sexual feelings without 
distinction as not nice. We have left them ignorant that 
sex feelings may be good or bad according to their asso- 
ciations. Harmful emotional repression has been inevit- 
able, with a result in the after years of distaste for mother- 
hood and passionate 'marriage. We have made love un- 
clean and separated it from their lives. And, where love 
is not, all else is barren. I must speak strongly, for very 
great is the evil we are countenancing. 



374 MOTHERHOOD 

The attitude of woman herself is the deep secret of this 
question ; and by attitude I mean something more than the 
desire of the individual girl or woman, I mean the col- 
lective spirit in which life is approached. That is where 
we have been wanting. We, the mothers and teachers of 
this last generation of women, have failed to grasp life 
and all that it means. 

What we have most dreaded in education is sex. We 
can control this attitude only in our schools. Emancipa- 
tion can come through a regaining of consciousness. Get 
this right — let our girls feel that their education because 
they are women is the most important work of the nation, 
more, not less important, than is the education of their 
brothers, and the rest will follow. 

We have by our whole attitude shown the most coarse 
lack of understanding of the needs of girls. Instruction 
has been the sole effort of our schools. This has hampered 
the perfection of life. Our daughters have but accepted 
and abandoned their bodies and their souls to the rollers 
of that crushing machine we have called education. 

All of us are responsible, for our thoughts and our de- 
sires affect the universe and our neighbours. Neither can 
any repentance that may come late, nor any wailings of 
dismay, stop the consequences of our sinning follies. 

I cannot lay too much stress on this sense of women'iS 
desire, for it is this that will direct action in the future. 
If we cannot have a fundamental change of desire, a fresh 
view of what is a sane, complete and profitable life ; if we 
cannot cease from our fears of sex ; if we cannot alter the 
ideals we place before girls and work a revolution in the 
practice of our education, we shall do no good. There will 
be endless talk of advancement — of higher motherhood, of 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 375 

economic emancipation and freedom in marriage; there 
will also be continued tinkering legislation, with many 
timid experiments in mother-training and child-rearing, 
and underneath the spirit of motherhood will be dying, 
dying all the time. 

But the unbeliever will cry out: All this is utterly im- 
possible ; this is the old clog and degradation for women, 
limiting her to the single function of her sex. My answer 
is this. Even so it was from the beginning of time. Na- 
ture has so planned it, fixing the maternal instinct deep 
in the mother, and claiming from her the payment that 
must be given. Woman can only bow before the Throne 
of Life. She is entrusted with life's supreme mission, that 
of transmitting the sacred torch of life to future genera- 
tions. She belongs not to herself but to posterity. She 
must not squander her gift. She must store her energy 
that she may give life to her child. 

Woman, all-containing, universal — ^how should she be 
limited to herself.? This is my deepest belief. 

Woman is the giver, the interpreter. Freedom for her 
never can be identified with self-assertion. Great ele- 
mentary truths to-day have acquired an intensified sig- 
nificance. Oppression stretches like a rod over the earth, 
the world is ploughed with swords and reaped in blood. 
The echoes of slaughter reach from land to land. The 
cataclysm, with its immense appeal to terror and love and 
hate and pity, has acted to stir us profoundly and quicken 
our response to the emotional aspects of life. Old preju- 
dices are rooted up ; institutions are in the melting-pot. A 
people habitually resistant to emotion, we have been awak- 
ened to reality. I cannot doubt that we shall profit. We 
were occupied in intellectual pleasures and energies, but 



376 MOTHERHOOD 

now our souls have been harrowed. This is the great op- 
portunity if we have the will to use it. 

Fear has been in us the folly irredeemable, planted like 
seeds of the wild weeds among our wheat. Even in our 
childhood doubt has slept with us in our cradles, as verily 
we have been conceived in sin, being born without pas- 
sionate joy. And this disharmony has followed us up and 
down in the home ; doubt was our schoolfellow, ever follow- 
ing our steps in our work and in our play, until fear has 
become our perpetual companion. I see the past, the 
present and the future existing all at once before me, and 
I know that as soon as fear is conquered redemption is 
ready. 

Then no longer will the blessings of the Psalmist be 
changed by our faithless folly into cursing, but again the 
wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of the house 
and the children like olive plants around the table. Be- 
hold, thus shall the woman and the man be blessed together, 
and they shall see good all the days of their life. 

But this regeneration will come only through the crea- 
tion of our wills. Without unceasing desire nothing can 
be done. Desire is action. If you leave off desiring sal- 
vation you are lost. 

I tell you no virtue can be found apart from our desires. 
Life is the struggle everlasting, unceasing sacrifice, con- 
stant aspiration. 

What is the secret, if it is not Love ? 

The spirit of Life is Love triumphant, the immortal 
force which incites the struggle, makes glad the sacrifice, 
which stirs the desire to achieve. And the law of Love is 
as easy to state as it is difficult to apply; it is the trans- 
forming of the will which says "mine" into the will which 



ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST A REMEDY 377 

says "thine." It is a law that can be comprehended only 
by living it. 

I shall be called old-fashioned. Yet, perhaps, after all, 
I see further, deeper, and more surely than those who call 
me so. 

The union of the man and the woman cleaving to each 
other can be the wonder of life. Marriage should be a 
blessing of the senses, a kindling of the spirit, a mutual 
surrender, and a new creation. 

Creation is not accomplished; it is continuous and un- 
ceasing, and in its work every living thing has its share, 
destroying and creating. 

What is it that I desire .'^ fVVhat is it that I expect.'' 
What is the change of whose coming I feel as assured as 
of the rising of to-morrow's sun.^ 

I look for a regeneration of woman's instincts through 
consciousness. She, who has conquered the world, will 
then renounce the world. The old corruption will be swept 
away. Woman is the keeper of redemption ; it is her work 
to lead man back to the gate of his being. 

We are waiting in pain for the new liberation. Love 
alters everything, it melts the whole world and makes it 
afresh. Love is the sun of our spirits and the wind. 

Is there, indeed, this glad hope of things changing.? 
Changing? They have got to change. The weeds of our 
mistakes have so grown up that they are choking us. Yes, 
whether from inside or from out, I do not know yet, but 
there is change and awakening coming. Motherhood will 
triumph. Life is going to be made new before long. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



N.B. — This bibliography is intended as a guide to the student; it 
is merely representative, not in any part exhaustive. The books to 
which reference is made are marked with an asterisk, those of special 
importance with two asterisks. 

PART I 
The Womak's Movement 

Anker, E. Women's Suffrage in Norway. N.U. of W.S.S. 1913. 

Anthoxy, K. Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia. London, 
1916. 

Bax, E. B. The Fraud of Feminism. London, 1913. 

Blease, W. L. The Emancipation of English Women. New ed. 
London, 1913. 

Breevoort, J. Haar idealen (on feminism in Holland). Rotter- 
dam, 1914. 

Catt, C. C. The World Movement for Woman's Suffrage. Lon- 
don, 1911. 

Colquhoux, E. The Vocation of Woman. London, 1914. 
*CooMARASWAMY, A. Sati: A Vindication of the Hindu Women. 
Reprinted from the Sociological Review, April 1913. 

Fairfield, Z. The Woman's Movement. London, 1911. 

Some Aspects of the Woman's Movement. London, 1916. 

Fawcett, M. G. Women's Suffrage: A Short History of a Great 
Movement. The People's Books. 1912. 

George, W. L. Woman and To-morrow. London, 1912. 
Article in English Review, December 1916. 

Gordox, H. The Prisoner: A Sketch. An experience of forcible 
feeding. Letchworth Press, 1911. 

Grieg, T. B. The Militant Suffrage Movement: Emancipation in 
a Hurry. London, 1911. 
Towards Woman's Liberty. London, 1910. 
379 



380 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

HuTCHiNS, B. L. Conflicting Ideals: Two Sides of the Woman's 

Question. London, 1913. 
International Women's Suffrage. Alliance Publications. 
Key, Ellen^. The Women's Movement. (Translated by M. B. 

Borthwick, with Introduction by Havelock Ellis.) New York 

and London, 1912. 
LYTTOif, Lady Constance. Prisons and Prisoners. London, 1914. 
Martin, E. S. The Unrest of Women. New York and London, 

1913. 
Mason, B. Story of the Woman's Suffrage Movement. (Intro- 
duction by the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Lincoln.) 

New York and London, 1912. 
Mayreder, Rosa. A Survey of the Woman Problem. (Translated 

from the German by H. Scheffauer.) London, 1913. 
*Meikle, M. Towards a Sane Feminism. London, 1916. 
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies Publications. 
Owen, H. Woman Adrift: The Menace of Suffragism. London, 

1912. 
Pankhurst, E. Why we are Militant. London, 1914. 

My Own Story. London, 1914. 
Pankhurst, E. S. The Suffragette. The history of the women's 

militant suffrage movement. New York, 1911. 
Roberts, K. Pages from the Diary of a Militant Suffragette. 

Letchworth Press, 1911. 
Robins, E. Way Stations. London, 1913. 
Sharp, E. Rebel Women. (Introduction by E. Robin.) London, 

1915. 
ScHiRMACHER, K. The Modern Women's Rights Movement. An 

historical survey. (Translated from 3rd German ed, by C. 

Conrad.) New York, 1912. 
Stanton, C. S. History of Women's Suffrage. New York, 1881. 
Swan WICK, H. M. The Future of the Women's Movement. (In- 
troduction by Mrs. Fawcett.) London, 1913. 
Woman's Press. Many Publications. 
Women's Freedom League. The Vote, pamphlets, etc. 
Women's Social and Political Union. Votes for Women and other 

publications. 
Wright, Sir A. The Unexpurgated Case against Woman Suffrage. 

London, 1913. 
Zimmern, a. Women's Suffrage in Many Lands. 1909. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 381 

PART II 

Animal Parenthood 

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*BoNHOTE, J. Lewis. Birds of Britain. London, 1907. 

Vigour and Heredity. London, 1915. 
*Brehm, a. E. Thierleben. Liepzig, 1876, etc. 

Ornithology of the Science of Birds. (From the text of Dr. 
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*Darwin, C. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. 
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The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. 
Pop. ed. London, 1905. 
**EspiNAs, A. Des Societes Animales Etude de psychologie com- 

paree. Paris, 1877. 
**Fabre, J. Henri. The Life and Love of the Insect. (Translated 
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Social Life in the Insect World. (Translated by Bernard 

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The Works of J. H. Fabre. (Translated by A. Teixeira de 
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*Geddes, p., and Thomson, J. A. The Evolution of Sex. 4th re- 
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Sex. Home Univ. of Modern Knowledge. London, 1911. 
Problems of Sex. Tracts for the Times. London, 1911. 
*Houzeau, J. C. Etudes sur les facultes raentales des animaux 

comparees a celles de I'homme. Mons, 1872. 
*HuDSON, W. H. Adventures Among Birds. London, 1913. 
Birds and Man. London, 1915. 
British Birds. London, 1895. 
The Naturalist in La Plata. London, 1903. 
* Kellogg, V. L. Animal Life. Twentieth Century Text Books. 
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*Letourneau, C. J. M. The Evolution of Marriage and of the 
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*MivART, St. George. Types of Animal Life. London, 1893. 

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PART III 

The Mother Amo2s"g Primitive Peoples 

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The Matriarchal Family System. Nineteenth Century, July 
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PART IV 
Women Workers; Marriage; Illegitimacy; Venereal Diseases 

Addams, J. The Long Road of Women's Misery. New York, 1916. 
A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. New York, 1912. 
**Baines, H. H. C. The Divorce Commission. The Majority and 
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Baldwin. Mental Development in the Child and the Race. New 
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Barrault, M. Le travail a Domicile en Angleterre. Paris, 1915. 

Benson, G. R. Legislation for the Protection of Women. London, 
1912. 

Bird, M. Women at Work. London, 1911. 

Black, C. Sweated Industry and the Minimum Wage. (Introduc- 
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Black, C. (edited by). Married Women's Work. Report of in- 
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Blagg, H. M. Analysis of Infant Mortality. London, 1910. 
**Bloch, I. Sexual History of our Times. (Translated from 6th 

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**Braun, Lily. Die Frauenfrage. Leipzig, 1901. 

Bray, B. A. The Town Child. London, 1907. 

British Medical Journal. Many articles, especially: "Legislation 
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1915; "Maternity and Child Welfare," February 23 and 
April 29, 1916; "Report on the Royal Commission on Vene- 
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Cadbury, E., and Shann, G. Sweating. London, 1907. 

Cadbury', E., Matheson, M. C, and Shann, G. Women's Work 
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1891. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 387 

**Carpenter, Pi. Love's Coming of A^e. London, 1914. 

The Intermediate Sex: a Study of some Transitional Types of 

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Castle, C. S. A Statistical Study of Eminent Women. New 
York, 1906. 
Archives of Psychology, No. 27. 
Chapman, A. and M. Status of Women under the English Law. 

London, 1909. 
Chapman, C. Marriage and Divorce. Some needed Reforms in 

Church and State. London, 1911. 
Chesser, E. S. Woman, Marriage, and Motherhood. (Preface by 

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Collet, C. E. Women in Industry. London, 1911. 
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The Nationalisation of Wealth. London, 1892. 
The Problem of Race Regeneration. New Tracts for the 

Times. London, 1911. 
Essays in Wartime. London, 1915. 
Eugenical Review, The. London. 

Fere, C. S. The Pathology of the Emotions. (Translated from 
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388 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

**GALLiCHAnr, W. M. Chapters on Human Lives. London, 1904. 
Women under Polygamy. London and New York, 1914. 
The Great Unmarried. London, 1916. 
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Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Law and Consequences. 

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Galway, W. R. a Review of our Present Position as regards the 
Prevention and Treatment of Venereal Diseases. Madras, 
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Greenwood, A. Health and Physique of School Children. School 

of Economics. London, 1913. 
GuiBERT, G. Le Mariage et ses consequences. 
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Women and Morality. (Reprinted from the English Review, 

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Note on Mortality of Young Children. Reprinted from Journal 

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Statistics of Women's Life and Employment. Reprinted from 

Journal of Statistical Society. London, 1909. 
Woman in Modern Industry. Chapter on Women's Wages, 
by J. J. Multon. London, 1915. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 389 

Johnston, J. Wastcige of Child Life as exemplified by condi- 
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Krafft-Ebing, Baron R. von. Psychopathia Sexualis. (Trans- 
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Leys, G. A Text Book on Gonorrhoea and its Complications. 

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McCabe, J. The Influence of the Church on Marriage and Divorce. 
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*Marcuse, M. Uneheliche Mutter. (Grosstadt Dokumente Band 

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Das nervose Weib. Berlin, 1898. 
Die contrare Sexualempfindung. Berlin, 1891. 
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MoRLEY, E. J. (edited by). Women Workers in Seven Profes- 
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School Hygiene. 14th ed., rewritten by J. Kerr. London, 
1916. 



390 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

**Parsons, E. C. The Decline of the Family. (Chapter V in Na- 
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Marriage and Parenthood: a Distinction. {The International 
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Payne, C. E. Women after the War and Now. London, 1915. 
**Pearson, Karl. The Ethic of Freethought and other Addresses 

and Essays. 2nd ed. London, 1901. 
**Peabsok, Karl, and Eldertok, E. M. On the Correlation of Fer- 
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Rembatjgh, B. The Political Status of Women in the United 
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Row3s^TREE, S. Poverty: A Study of Town Life. London, 1901. 
Saleebt, Dr. C. W. Woman and Womanhood. London, 1912. 

The Methods of Race Regeneration. (New Tracts for the 

Times.) London, 1911, etc. 
Parenthood and Race Culture. London, 1909. 
Saunders, T. W. Law and Practice of Orders of Affiliation. 11th 

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Scharlieb, Dr. M. The Hidden Scourge. (National Life Series.) 
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Womanhood and Race Regeneration. (New Tracts for the 

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What it means to Marry. Questions of Sex. London, 1914. 
The Prevention and Arrest of Venereal Disease in Women. 
(Lecture at Royal Institute of Public Health.) Reported in 
Medical World of London, January 26, 1917. 
ScHREixER, O. Woman and Labour. London, 1911. 

Thoughts about Women. (Preface by Anna Purcell.) Cape 
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S3IITH, A. C. The Problem of Nations: A Study in the Causes, 
Symptoms, and Effects of Sexual Diseases, and the Educa- 
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Smith, E. Wage-Earning Women and Their Dependents. (Fabian 
Society.) London, 1916. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 391 

Smith, W. G. Incompatibility and Some of its Lessons. 2nd ed. 
London and Dublin, 1911. 
Statistique des Families. Paris, 1906. 
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Taylor, G. S., and Mackenna, R, W. The Salvarsan Treatment 
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**TwEEDiE, Mrs. Alec. The Women's Army. Eng. Review, January 
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Urbin, E. L. a Short History of Marriage: Marriage Rites, Cus- 
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Watson^, D. Gonorrhoea and its Complications in Male and Fe- 
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Webb, S. The Declining Birth-Rate. (Fabian Tract No. 131.) 

London, 1910. 
Whelham, W. C. D. The War and the Race. The Quarterly 

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Woman and Child Wage-earners, U.S.A., vols, i-xiii. 
**Woman's Co-operative Guild. Maternity Letters from Working 
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Women's Labour League Pamphlets. London. 
Working Women and Divorce. An Account of Evidence given 
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Royal Commission on Divorce. London, 1912. 
Yule, G. U. On the Changes in the Marriage and Birth-rate in 
England and Wales during the past Half-century. Journ. 
Roy. Stat. Soc, bdx., 1906. 



PART V 

Sexual Education and the Young Girl 

Addams, J. Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. New York, 1909. 
Bell, S. A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love Between 

the Sexes. American Journ. Psychology, July 1902. 
Blackwell, E. Counsel to Parents. London, 1913. 
Bremner, C. S. Education of Girls and Women. (Preface by 

E. P. Hughes.) London, 1897. 
Butler, G. F. Love and its AflBnities. Chicago, 1899. 
Chesser, E. S. From Girlhood to Womanhood. London, 1913. 



392 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Chisholm, Dr. Medical Inspection of Girls in Secondary Schools. 
Clapabede, Ed. Psychologic de I'Enfant. Paris, 1916. 
Clouston, Sir T. S. The Psychological Dangers to Women in 
Modern Social Developments. London, 1911. 
Before I Wed; or. Young Men and Women. London, 1913. 
Ellis, H. Havelock. The Task of Social Hygiene. London, 1912. 
**Freud, S. Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory. Infantile 
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Gould, F. J. Parent's Guide to the Sex Instruction of Sons and 
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Grant, C, and Hodgson, N. The Case for Co-Education. 
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Educational Problems. 3 vols. New York and London, 1911. 
Youth: Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene. New York, 

1906. 
Aspects of Child Life and Education. (By G. S. Hall and 

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HousMAN, L. The Immoral Eifects of Ignorance in Sex Relations. 
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**Key, Ellen. The Century of the Child. 

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LiscHNEwsKA, M. Geschlechtliche Belehrung der Kinder. Re- 
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Morgan, A. The American Girl: Her Education, Her Responsi- 
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SroowiCK, Mrs. H. Health Statistics of Women Students of Cam- 
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Reports, Minority and Majority, of Special Commission on Co- 
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Thomson, M. H. Environment and Efficiency. 
Wood-Allen, Mary. What a Young Girl Ought to Know. Phila- 
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Woods, A. Co-Education. London and New York, 1893. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY S93 

REPORTS 

Annual Report for 1914 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of 
Education. (Cd. 8055.) 

Annual Report for 1915 of the Cliief Medical Officer of the Board of 
Education. (Cd. 8338.) 

Board of Education: School Attendance and Employment in Agri- 
culture. 1916. (Cd. 8171.) 

Final Report of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases. 1916. 
(Cd. 8189.) 

Appendix, Minutes of Evidence, etc., to Final Report of the 'Royal 
Commission on Venereal Diseases. 1916. (Cd. 8190.) 

Ministry of Munitions: Health of Munitions Workers Committee. 
Memorandum 4, Employment of Women. (Cd. 8185.) Memo- 
randum 5, Hours of Work. (Cd. 8186), and Memorandum 12, 
Statistical Information concerning Output in Relation to Hours 
of Labour. (Cd. 8344.) August 1916. 

Ministry of Munitions (Health of Munitions Workers Committee), 
Juvenile Employment. 1916. (Cd. 8362.) 

Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deteriora- 
tion. 1904. (Cd. 2175.) 

Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws (Minority Re- 
port). 1909. (Cd. 4499.) 

Report on Sex in Industry, being Part IV of 33rd Report of the 
Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labour. Boston, 1904. 

The Declining Birth-Rate, its causes and effects, being the Report 
of and chief evidence taken by the National Birth-Rate Com- 
mission. London, 1916. 

Report of the Proceedings of the Conference on Infant Mortality 
held in Caxton Hall, Westminster, March 1908. King & Son, 
London, 190@. 



INDEX 



Abolition of one home. (See 
Home life threatened.) 

Abolition of marriage. (See 
Free love.) 

Abortion, 36, 45, 217, 258, 264 

Adam and Eve myth, 189-190 

Adolescence, 324, 329 et seq., 
334, 340-341, 359 et seq. 

Adolescence, Dangers of, 305- 
306, 333-335, 341 et seq., 345- 
346 

Adolescent girls, 175, 329-347, 
356-374 

Aksakoff, S., 171 

Alligators, 79 

Ancestors, Our primitive, 143 
et seq. 

Animal parenthood. (See Par- 
enthood pre-human.) 

Ante-natal deaths, 36, 45 

Ants, 69, 70 

Asceticism, 199, 220. (See also 
Celibacy.) 

B 

Bastardy laws in England, 257, 

258, 261, 262-263, 270, 271, 

276-277 
Bastardy laws in Norway, 272- 

276 
Bastardy laws in other countries, 

277-279 
Bastardy laws in Scotland, 263 
Bastardy laws, Reform of, 271- 

282 
Beauty and one Beast story, 295 
Bees, 69, 70 

Bird parents, 60, 63, 99-114 
Birds, Devotion of, to family, 

103 et seq. 
Birth-rate, Decline of, 31, 32, 36, 

247, 258, 263, 355-356, 357, 371 
Bloch, I wan, 192 
Bonhote, J. Lewis, 100 
Brauer, 83 



Carbonnier, M., 91, 93 

Care of young by pre-human 

parents, 59-135 
Carnivores, 123, 124 
Celibacy in men and women, 234 
Celibacy, Suffering caused by, 

237 
Celibacy, Value of, 236 
Celibate women, 372 
Chastity, 194, 234, 235-237 
Child, Duty to, 202, 203-204, 214 
Child, Its rights, 181-183, 356 
Child to be trained by experts, 

169, 181-182 
Child welfare, 31, 33, 35 et seq., 

52, 247, 264, 279, 374 
Children born in sin, 221 
Children, Desire for, 113-114, 

214, 217 
Children, DisUke of, 216-217, 

220, 223-225 
Children killed by conditions of 

life, 36 et seq., 40 et seq. 
Children not wanted, 352, 354 
Child's curiosity on sex matters, 

310 et seq., 320-323, 324 
Child's need of its parents, 181 
Civilisation, Failure of, 40 et seq. 
Co-education, 332 
Communal clan, 145, 149-150, 152, 

155, 156, 159, 174, 191 
Communal houses, 169, 181 
Communal living, 173, 176, 177, 

180 
Companionship essential to true 

marriage, 209 
Concealments in love sinful, 230 

et seq., 249-254, 257, 261 
Conduct, Advantages of fixed 

standards for, 203 
Confusion in women's lives, 168, 

173, 203 
Connection between mother and 

child, 60, 61, 118-121, 147, 151, 

154, 184 



395 



396 



INDEX 



Contempt for woman's sphere, 

363 
Contrast between the family and 

the clan, 150-153 
Contrasts between the sexes, 249- 

254 
Co-operation between the father 

and the mother, 71, 105-lOff, 

121, 132, 196 
Co-operative child-rearing, 111- 

113, 167 et sea., 169, 176, 177, 

181 
Courtship, 152 
Creating' a home, 177 
Creek Indians of Georgia, 180 
Crime in the family, 108 
Crime of irresponsible parent- 
hood, 240 
Crime of overworking mother, 

40 et seq. 
Crocodiles, Young, 80 
Cuckoo, 63, 107 
Curiosity on sex matters, Child's, 

310 et seq., 320-323, 324 
Customs of male ownership of 

woman, 144 et seq., 149, 153 



Darwin, 126 
Death-rate, 32 

Death-rate, Illegitimate, 262-964> 
Death-rate, Infantile, 36-38, 45- 
46, 287, 355 

E 

Economic conditions. (See In- 
dustrialism.) 

Educating girls as sexless neu- 
ters, 332 e* s^g. (See also Sex- 
ual education.) 

Education, 34, 35, 305-377 

Education, Failure of, 331-337, 
341, 344-345, 371 et seq. 

Eggs, Care of, 63, 70, 80, 81, 103 

Egoism in female, 19 et seq., 102, 
119, 120, 133, 170, 183, 184, Q21, 
223, 361 

Egoism in male, 64, 108, 117, 
119, 121, 124, 127, 129, 143 
et seq., 150 

Egoistic factor in sex, 66, 103, 
117, 150, 222, 367-368 



Ehrlich, 287 

Ellis, Havelock, 127 

Emotion displayed by fishes, 89 

Emotion, Human need of, 20-21, 
135, 177, 201 

Emotional view of life. Impor- 
tance of, 372-373 

Environment, Effect of, 62 

Espinas, Alfred, 75, 79, 126 

Eugenics, 197 



Fabre, Henri, 55, 65-66, 68, 71, 

72, 74, 76, 95 

Familial groups, 125-126, 145. 
(See also Communal clan and 
Familial instinct.) (See Pa- 
rental instinct.) 

Family, The, 165-186 

Familv, Experiments in the, 66, 
70, *85, 99, 100, 109-114, 153, 
165, 173, 195-196 

Family, History of the, 141-159 

Family, Ideal of, 165-186 

Family, Limitation of the, 82, 
122, 123, 132, 133, 194, 197, 217 

Family, Reversal in duties con- 
nected with the, 60, 63, 79, 82- 
84, 86-89, 90, 92, 93, 94-95, 99- 
103, 266 

Father, Legal parent, 155 et seq., 
157, 192 

Father-right, 159, 192-194. (See 
also Patriarchal family.) 

Fathers, Devotion of, 64-65, 70- 
72, 184-185. (See also Family, 
Reversal in duties connected 
with.) 

Feeding offspring, 39, 64, 70-71, 
103, 104-105, 118, 120, 147, 264 

Fidelity, Conjugal, 189, 191, 196, 
203, ' 204, 205, 210, 213, 220, 
222 297 

Fish fathers, 86-94 

Freud, S., 235, 315, 316 



Gallinaceous birds. (See Polyga- 
mous fathers.) 
Games of children, 315 
Geddes, Professor, 89 



INDEX 



397 



George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd, 35, 

257 
George, W. L., 167, 251 
Gilman, Mrs. Perkins, 169 
Girls, Denial of their woman- 
hood, 345 et seq. (See also 
Adolescent girls.) 
Girls, Hidden life of, 334 et seq., 

366, 368 
Girls, Passage into womanhood, 
360 et seq., 366. (See also 
Adolescent girl.) 
Girls, Real nature of, 362, 368 
Girls, View of love, 367-368 
Gonorrhoea, 287. (See also Ve- 
nereal diseases.) 

H 

Habits, Importance of, 70, 120, 

143 
Hall, Stanley, 367 
Hensel, Dr.* Reinhold, 92 
Home, Attachment of woman to 

the, 146 
Home, Importance of, 62, 109, 

165-186 
Home and one family, 165-186 
Home life threatened, 49, 174, 

176 et seq., 185, 241 et seq., 

244-247 
Houtzeau, J. C, 127 
Howard, Eliot, 107 
Hudson, W. H., 107 
Hygiene, Sexual. (See Sexual 

education.) 
Hypocrisy, 231 et seq., 236, 238, 

257, 346 

I 

Ideal of the home, 170, 196, 243- 

244 
Ideal of marriage, 248-249, 300 
Ideals, The guide to conduct, 52, 

166, 170, 203, 204-205, 210, 216, 

300, 342, 344, 354, 372 
Ignorance, Evils of, 40 
Illegitimacy, Causes of, 268-270 
Illegitimacy, Its connectiob with 

marriage, 267-268 
Illegitimacy, Problem of, 257-282 
Illegitimacy, Sin of, 259, 261, 274 
Illegitimate birth the result of 

unhappy marriages, 268 



Illegitimate child. Appointment 

of guardians for, 279, 280 
Illegitimate child. Protection of, 

259, 261, 265, 270-282 
Illegitimate infantile death-rate, 

261-264 
Incubation of eggs, 63, 103 
Independence of woman. (See 

Freedom and woman.) 
Indifference to offspring among 

pre-human parents, 63, 87, lOO, 

121 
Individual family, 145, 155 et' seq., 

159, 170, 181, 185, 195, 245 
Individualism, 204, 352, 372 
Industrialism, 40 et seq., 50, 52, 

170, 171, 174, 177, 182, 244, 352, 

356 
Industrial values, 352, 372 
Infanticide, 128, 267, 279 
Infantile death-rate. (See Death- 
rate, Infantile.) 
Infantile sexuality, 315-316, 340 
Insect home-makers, 64-66, 67, 

68, 70, 74 
Insect parenthood, 59-76 
Instinct, Action of, 21, 37, 61, 

64, 70, 75-76, 199-216, 341, 356 
Instincts, Atrophy of, 356 et seq. 
Instincts, Primitive, 199 
Instincts, Regeneration of, 201, 

298-300, 376, 377 
Instruction of girls among prim- 
itive peoples, 152, 344 
Instruction in sex more necessary 

for girls than boys, 329-339 
Intellectual reformers, 166-168, 

196, 197, 330 
Intelligence, Connection between 

caring for young, 75-76, 95, 99, 

131, 132, 135 
Iroquois Indians, 180 



Jealousy, 109, 121 et seq., 143- 
146, 150 et seq., 202-203 

K 

Key, Ellen, 272 

Kinship, Feeling of, 144. (See 
also Mother, The, in one prim- 
itive family.) 



398 



INDEX 



Laws, Need of, to protect illegit- 
imate child, 279-282. {8ee also 
Mother, The unmarried.) 

Lessons to be learnt from past 
history of one family, 142-143, 
165 et seq., 191 et seq. 

Lessons to be learnt from pre- 
human parents, 60 et seq., 76, 
82-83, 93-96, 99-102, 112, 114, 
130-135, 165, 181 

Letourneau, 125, 126, 128 

Letters from working women. 
(See Women's Co-operative 
Guild.) 

Levick, Murray, 110 

Libertinage. (See Profligacy.) 

Life, Externalising of, 17 et seq., 
351 et seq. 

Life, Meaning of, 135, 159, 197- 
198, 375-376 

Love, 190, 198-200, 201, 211, 214- 
215, 326, 347, 376-377 

Love, Art of, 298 

Love-child. (See Illegitimacy.) 

Love, Free, 197, 202, 211. (See 
also Sexual relationships. Ir- 
regular.) 

Love triumphant, 376-377 

Love, Wild, 239, 251 

Love, Woman's view of, 199 ef 
seq., 294-297, 339 et seq., 345- 
347, 373 et seq. 

Lover, The passionate, 198 et seq. 

Lovers, Responsibilities of, 224, 
240, 253-254, 273, 275, 277, 376- 
377 

M 

Maeterlinck, M., 64 

Male held to the family, 158, 183 

Male the psychical mother, 85 
et seq., 134. (See also Fathers, 
Devoted.) 

Mammals, Parenthood among, 
117-135, 165 

Man the protector, 15 

Man, Suffered selfishness of, 34, 
269, 343 

Marriage as it affects parent- 
hood, 34, 248, 268 



Marriage, A religious duty, 199 
Marriage, Christian view of, 199- 

200 
Marriage, Difficulties of, 198, 

211, 212 
Marriage, Immorality in connec- 
tion with, 200, 202, 209, 213, 

230 
Marriage, Late, 236, 237, 267- 

268, 294 
Marriage, Maternal, 150-152, 153, 

156, 191, 245 
Marriage, Some people un- 

suited for, 209, 211-212, 221, 

222-223, 230, 239 
Marriage, Various forms of, 

133, 145, 154, 156, 191, 194 
Marriages, Causes of unhappi- 

ness in, 342, 344 
Maternal communism. (See 

Communal clan.) 
Maternal family. (See Matri- 

archate.) 
Maternal instinct, 34, 37 et seq., 

61, 70, 79, 80, 84 et seq., 99, 

123, 216-217, 221, 222 
Maternal instinct in the making, 

55, 70, 85, 101, 131. (See also 

Parenthood, Pre-human.) 
Masturbation, 339 
Matriarchate, 141 et seq., 150, 

152 
Megapode, 63 
Meikle, Wilma, 168 
Menstruation, Importance of, 

357, 359-360, 363-364 
Menstruation, Our neglect of, 

353, 356, 357-364 
Metchnikoff, 143 
Militancy, 14, 19 et seq. 
Millais, T. G., 109 
Mivart, St. George, 81, 91 
Money, L. Chiozza, 241, 246 
Monkeys, 119, 123, 127, 144 
Monogamy among the animals. 

73, 74, 109, 126-127, 128 
Monogamy, Desire for, 193 et 

seq., 195, 202, 203, 204-205, 

209, 238 
Monogamous marriage, 158, 189- 

205, 209 et seq., 230, 238, 248 



INDEX 



399 



Monogamy, Woman's inclination 

towards, 189-190 
Moral standards, Necessity for, 

203, 204 
Mother-age. (5^ee Matriarchate.) 
Mother, Descent reckoned 

through, 152 
Mother egoism. {See Egoism, 

Female.) 
Mother, Our neglect of the, 35 

et seq., 40 et seq., 46, 353 et 

seq., 356, 357 
Mother, The, in one primitive 

family, 141-159 
Mother, The unmarried, 357-2S2 
Motherhood, Decay of, 35 et 

seq., 40 et seq., 215 et seq., 256, 

364 
Motherhood degraded, 35 et seq., 

40 et seq., 99-102, 107, 123, 182, 

214, 217, 223-225, 347 
Motherhood, Enlightened, 33, 

181, 360, 374, 377 
Motherhood, Healthy, 40-44, 50 
Motherhood, Saving of, 34, '52- 

53, 185-186 
Motherhood, Shirking of, 356 
Motherhood, Some women un- 

suited for, 221-222, 223-225 
Mother-instinct. {See Maternal 

instinct.) 
Mother-right, 154. {See also 

Matriarchate.) 
Mothers injured through work, 

40-41, 354 
Mothers, Neglectful, 66, 87-88, 

99-102, 107-108 
Mother-woman, 221 et seq. 
Munition workers, 46-53, S40 

N 

Nervous energy. Importance of, 

for women, 50-52, 353 et seq. 
Nestmaking, 65, 67, 79, 80, 82, 

84, 90, 91, 102, 107-108 
New generation of young women, 

351-352 
Newts, 85 
Noguchi, 287 
Nursing offspring. {See Feeding 

offspring.) 



Obsessions, 316 

Offspring cared for by father. 

{See Fathers, Devoted.) 
Ostrich, 103 



Parent hunger, 113-114, 214 

Parental conduct. {See Intelli- 
gence, Connection between car- 
ing for young.) 

Parental conduct dependent on 
the sexual appetite, 102, 221 
et seq., 368 

Parental duties, Neglect of, 
weakens family, 107 

Parental instinct, 34, 60, 61, 62, 
70, 81, 91, 94 et seq., 105, 106, 
130, 196, 214, 221, 368 

Parental instinct, Diversity of, 
62, 94, 99, 132, 134 

Parental instinct not fixed in the 
mother, 79, 89, 99-102, 130, 184, 
223 

Parental instinct, Strength of 
the, dependent on expression, 
94, 135, 196 

Parental sacrifice, 63, 64-65, 66, 
70-73, 103 et seq., 106, 221 

Parental sacrifice more common 
with mother than father, 66, 
171-173, 185 

Parenthood, Difference between 
human and pre-human, 61, 130 

Parenthood, Pre-human, 34, 37, 
130, 135 

Parents, Bad, 107, 182-183, 221 
et seq. 

Paternal instinct. {See Fathers, 
Devoted.) 

Patriarchal family, 68-69 

127, 143 et seq., 150, 156 et seq., 
166, 171-173, 185 

Patriarchal family. {See Ad- 
vantages of.) 157-159, 170, 
173, 185, 191 et seq., 203 

Paul, Jean, 306 

Penang, Highlanders of Su- 
matra, 180 

Penguins, 109-114, 181 

Phalaropes, 100, 102, 224 

Pleasure factor in love, 221, 222, 



400 



INDEX 



Polygamy, 154, 103-195 
Polygamy connected with desire 

for offspring, 87, 88, 148 
Polygamous fathers, 101, 108-109, 

124 et seq., 126, 127, 133 
Polygamy, Legalised, 191, 195, 

213 
Polyandrous mothers, 101, 133, 

223 
Polyandry, 154-155 
Position of the father under 

matriarchy, 151, 191 
Position of the mother under 

patriarchy, 171-172, 192 
Primitive human family, 141-159 
Problem of education. (See Ed- 
ucation.) 
Production, Prodigality of, 82; 

123 
Profligacy, 193, 202, 210, 215, 230, 

281, 343 
Prostitute, The natural, 221 
Prostitution, 230, 239, 250, 252, 

285-286, 306 
Prudery, 48, 308, 357 
Prurience, 308, 309, 320 
Psalmist on blessings of home, 

376-377 
Psychological meaning of the 

combination of man and 

woman, 331-332 
Pueblos of New Mexico, 180 
Puritan views of sex, 218, 346 
Purpose, Women's want of, 180, 

290 
Pycraft, 68, 80, 82, 84, 89, 90 

92, 101, 104, 106 
Python mother, 80 

R 

Race-protecting instinct, 22 
Racial duty, 102, 175, 202, 214, 

262 et seq., 265, 285 et seq., 

354, 374-377 
Remedy, The, 351-377 
Repression, Dangers of, 21, 20^, 

261, 317, 339, 340, 355, 373 
Reptile parents, 63, 79-86 
Response to life. Deadening of 

the, 351 et seq. 
Rodents, 129 



Romance, Dangers of, for girls, 

295, 338, 366 
Rousseau, 306 



Sacrifice, Woman's obligation of, 

15, 129, 145, 376 
Salamander parents, 85 
Salzmann, 306 
Saving of infant life. {See Child 

welfare.) 
Scharlieb, Dr. Mary, 355 
Schneider, 91 
Schools for girls, 35, 334, 341, 

362, 370 
Schools, Special adolescent, 363- 

371 
Secondary sexual characters, 73, 

84, 134 
Secret sexual relationships, 229- 

254 
Seduction, 269 

Self-assertion the modern dis- 
ease, 17 et seq., 171, 241 et seq., 

352 
Servants, Danger of, with boys, 

311, 312 
Sex antagonism, 242, 331, 343 
Sex, Fear of, 307, 308 et seq., 

313, 315, 320, 324-326, 329, 331, 

339, 343, 346, 357, 362, 373, 375 
Sex hunger, 100, 101, 146, 201, 

213, 215, 232 
Sex, Importance of, 99, 172, 213, 

215, 231, 232, 235, 236 
Sex needs, 232 et seq., 234-235, 

251 
Sex, Reverence for, 326 
Sex, Unceasing action of, 362 
Sexes, DiflPerences between, 17, 

18, 19, 27, 60, 73, 145, 189, 

234-235, 331-332, 342, 366, 368 
Sexes, Disproportion in numbers 

of, 230, 245, 351 
Sexual abstinence, 232, 236. {See 

Celibacy.) 
Sexual anaesthesia, 342 
Sexual association. {See Mar- 
riage, Various forms of.) 
Sexual contrast, 199, 231 
Sexual diseases. {See Venereal 

diseases.) 



INDEX 



401 



Sexual disharmonies, 197, 235, 

239, 317, 339, 345, 346 
Sexual education. The child's, 

289, 305-326, 367 

Sexual education, The girl's, 268, 

290, 294, 329-346, 366 et seq. 
Sexual friendships, 198, 230 et 

seq., 238, 249-255. {See also 
Sexual relationships, Irregu- 
lar.) 

Sexual happiness, 195, 229, 250, 
335, 342, 354 

Sexual health, 235, 285 et seq., 
316, 329, 335, 362, 365 

Sexual ignorance, 42-43, 199, 220, 
222, 232, 243, 260, 268, 305-377 

Sexual impulse, 214, 306, 330, 333 
et seq., 345-347, 368 

Sexual life. Liberation from, 168, 
201 

Sexual life, Neglect of, 34, 47- 
48, 201, 212, 213, 229, 231, 290, 
298, 330 et seq., 342, 362-363, 
368-369 

Sexual nature, Woman's, 18, 199, 
221, 224, 234-236, 239, 298, 341, 
353, 357 et seq. 

Sexual relationships. Irregular, 
34, 193, 195, 202, 210-211, 213, 
229-254, 257, 260, 285, 357 

Sexual relationship not a private 
matter, 237 et seq. 

Sexual relationships. Open dec- 
laration of, 237 et seq., 249-254, 
257 

Sexual sacrifice, 297 

Sexual sin, Man's responsibility 
for, 292 et seq. 

Sexual superiority, 149, 199, 244, 
311 

Sexual transformation, 86-89, 99- 
102, 134, 333, 334, 354 

Shaw, Bernard, 167 

Siren type of woman, 221 et seq., 
224-225 

Social colonies, 68 et seq.,^ 109. 
(See also Communal clan.) 

Sociability dependent on weak- 
ness, 127 

Species where young are tended 
by the father. (See Reversal 
in the family duties.) 



Stability of the home, 165, 179 
Standard of conduct, 344 
Sterile unions, 249 
Sticklebacks, Devoted fathers 

among, 86-89, 94, 109 
Sticklebacks, Unnatural mothers 

among, 87-88, 94 
Still-births, 36, 45, 262 
Suffrage martyrs, 25 
Suffrage movement, 13-28 
Syphilis, 272, 287. (See also Ve- 
nereal diseases.) 



Taboos, Sexual, 150, 331 

Tadpoles, 82, 84 
Termites. (See Ants.) 
Thomson, J. Arthur, 70, 89 
Toads, 83 
Totem marks, 150 

U 

Unconscious, The, 235, 339-340, 
346, 354 

Union, Form of, between the 
sexes, 62, 73-74, 133. (See also 
Sexual relationships. Irregu- 
lar.) 

Unmarried mother. (See Mother, 
The unmarried.) 

Urban life. Effect on mother- 
hood, 37 et seq. 



Variability of the male, 121 

Venereal diseases, 200, 213, 250, 
272, 285-300 

Venereal diseases, Commission, 
286-292, 308 

Venereal diseases. Dangers of 
secrecy, 286, 288, 292 et seq. 

Venereal diseases, Woman's re- 
sponsibility for, 292-300 

Visiting-husbands, 150, 151, 245 

Voeltzkow, 80 

Votes for women, 197. (See also 
Suffrage movement.) 

W 

Wage-earning woman. The ideal, 

170, 241 et seq., 246, 373 
Wallace, R., 100 



4oa 



INDEX 



War as impetus to action, 31, 

247, 258, 263, 371, 375 
War, Effect of, on woman's po- 
sition, 14-17, 26-28, 31 et seq., 

46 et seq., 174, 179 et seq., 212, 

241 et seq., 244-247, 251, 351, 

355 
War, The Great, 14, 26, 27-28, 31 

et seq., 247, 291, 375 
Wasps, Social, 69 
Wasserman, 287 
Wastage of life from war, 32, 

36, 212, 245, 247, ?^58, 263, 371 
Waste, The sin of, 31, 36 et seq., 

51, 59, 175, 212, 258, 265, 270 
Wedekind, Frank, 305 
Wells, H. G., 38, 167, 168 
Wife, Coldness of, 296, 342-343, 

344 
Wilson, Dr. Ed. A., 110, 114 
Woman, Character of, 189 et seq., 

191, 215 et seq., 234, 240, 345 
Woman, Desertion of the, 251-260 
Woman, Entrusted with lifers 

supreme mission, 374 et seq. 
Woman, Maternal type of, 261 

et seq. 
Woman, The domesticator of 

man, 150 et seq. 
Woman's attitude to life, 373 et 

seq. 
Woman's demand to live her own 

life, 18, 21, 172, 179, 216, 351- 

353 
Woman's movement, The, 18 et 

aeq„ 27-28 



Woman's power over man, 190- 
191, 344, 377 

Woman's position in the primi- 
tive family, 145-149 

Woman's primary qualities, 60, 
179, 345 et seq. 

Woman's undervaluation of her- 
self, 19, 28, 190, 201, 335, 345, 
352 

Women and Freedom, 168, 375 
et seq. 

Women, The desire of, 203, 210, 
241, 243 et seq., 244, 246, 354, 
372, 373, 374, 376 

Women, Types of, 221-225 

Women, Unsatisfied, 351 

Women's Co-operative Guild 
(maternity letters), 40-44 

Women's desire for excitement, 
19, 21 et seq., 28 

Women's need for experience, 19, 
21-23, 27-28 

Work and women, 15, 17, 18, 28, 
35, 40 et seq., 46 et seq., 51, 
170, 174 et seq., 179, 240 et 
seq,, 348, 372 

Work, Bad conditions of, 40 et 
seq., 175, 258, 352-354 

Workers, Munition, 46-52, 240 



Youth, Importance of, 122-123, 
361. {See also Sexual educa- 
tion.) 

Youth, Our sins towards, 290, 
305, 306, 345-347, 361, 374 et 
seq. 



